Dangerous Liaisons
by Nyiestra
Summary: A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But once they know the deal, will they even want to help him? Callen/Sam slash. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Rating:** T for language and bits of violence

**Warning:** Eventual Callen/Sam slash, nothing graphic. Discussion of depression and suicide but, again, nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story.

**-1-**

G positioned himself with his back to the wall, eliminating any possibility of his colleagues coming up behind him unannounced and overhearing whatever was on the tape. He pressed one earphone into place and hit play.

His own voice greeted his ears, the strain in his words enough to send him tumbling headlong back through time and space. His gut twisted and he was grateful for the support of the wall. _"DiNozzo, I—"_

"_Callen, what the hell happened?" DiNozzo hesitated, then knelt by Derring's body. He pressed his fingertips to the man's throat but G knew he'd feel no pulse. A double tap to the heart; he'd been dead before he hit the ground._

_DiNozzo holstered his weapon and unfastened Derring's overcoat, reaching inside to the still-holstered weapon. He couldn't possibly have reached for it. He'd posed no threat, and G could see the second Tony put it all together. "Shit, Callen."_

"_DiNozzo… Tony—"_

"_Do us both a favor and don't say anything." Silence overtook them both as DiNozzo pulled his cell phone out. "Gibbs? Derring's dead. Callen—"_

DiNozzo's words cut out and an unfamiliar voice pulled G out of his memories none too soon. "There's more of this, Agent Callen, but it's within your control to see that it never sees the light of day. Be at the phone booth on the corner of Sunset and Hilgard at thirteen hundred hours." The tape cut out then, and G let the wall hold him upright for a moment before he pocketed the tape and dug out his phone to call Gibbs.

When three calls to Gibbs' cell and two to his home number ended in recorded messages informing him that the numbers were no longer in service, he had no choice but to call DiNozzo. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to Tony—not that he did, either—but he doubted DiNozzo would be much help.

"DiNozzo." Gibbs' senior agent sounded harassed, his tone short and tight. When G didn't speak immediately, DiNozzo spoke again. "Look, I don't have all day."

"It's Callen."

"Shit."

That wasn't the reaction he was hoping for. "Good to talk to you too."

"Sorry, Callen. I'm just up to my eyeballs and then some and if you've got a case you plan on throwing our way, I'm throwing it back. What'd you need?"

"Gibbs."

DiNozzo didn't respond right away, but G waited him out. "Gibbs resigned. Retired, quit, I don't know what the hell they're calling it." Tony's voice sounded, if possible, tighter than it had been when he answered the call. "Anything I can do for you?"

There really wasn't but DiNozzo had a right to have some input into the destruction of his own career. "I got a… message from someone. It's about that thing that happened before I transferred to LA."

DiNozzo's voice, when he spoke again, was level and void of tension, which only told G exactly how tense he was. "From who?"

"Not sure."

"What exactly about?"

"He's looking for something in return for…" Fuck, how was he supposed to say this without incriminating himself over a telephone line that was fully susceptible to government eavesdropping? Any actual mention of blackmail and he'd be answering a lot of uncomfortable questions if a recording of this conversation got into the wrong person's hands. And, at the moment, he harbored no illusions about informational security.

DiNozzo put it together on his own; the sharp intake of breath was impossible to miss. "Do you know what?"

"No, but I've got some pretty good ideas. And none of them is…"

"Acceptable," DiNozzo finished for him. "Well, Callen, don't worry about me. You know better than that." DiNozzo sounded a little more like himself—though still not quite right. Gibbs's departure must have really thrown him. "And you sure as hell don't have any reason to worry about Gibbs, who's currently kicking back in Mexico with any number of spicy senoritas if he knows what's good for him. Which, really, it's anybody's guess whether he does or not. Do what you have to do. And I don't really think you need me to tell you what you need to do."

"No." G let his head fall back against the wall. "No, I don't. Thanks, DiNozzo."

"Let me know if you need anything from this end. We're kind of swamped… okay, we're really swamped and I haven't been home in three days so I don't really have time for anything else. But if you need something…"

"I will. Let me know if you hear from him. He's got almost as much reason to call you as he did to talk to me."

"Right. I'll keep an ear open." DiNozzo disconnected before G could bid him goodbye, which was just as well.

#

The phone booth was a victim of unfortunate placement—for G's purposes, anyway. It was on the corner of a building and as only one man, he couldn't keep an eye on the entire 270 degree exposure by himself. He just had to hope that whoever had sent the tape wanted something from him enough that he planned to let him live.

The phone rang a minute after thirteen hundred and G picked up on the third ring. "Yeah."

"Agent Callen?"

"What do you want?" Being blackmailed didn't leave him in the mood for pleasantries.

"You have access to the files on Operation Breakwater. I want them."

"Not happening." Not that G could have met any request the guy could have made, but that definitely wouldn't be an option. He wasn't sure he could even risk faking it.

"You'd prefer that NCIS be implicated in a cover-up?"

The short answer was yes. The Breakwater files included information on cooperative military black ops around the world. A leak of that magnitude would trump any level of embarrassment over a law-enforcement cover-up. The longer answer was that after three years he'd kind of gotten used to the idea that he wasn't going to end up in prison over Alex Derring.

"The only person you're going to hurt here is me." And Tony DiNozzo. And Jethro Gibbs, though if Tony was right about Gibbs' current whereabouts, who knew if any of this would matter to him. And possibly Tom Morrow, but G had never been quite sure how much of his transfer had been because Morrow knew what had happened and how much was because he just couldn't handle both Gibbs and himself in the same office. He'd always kind of thought it was the latter. G considered it a point of pride (mostly) that he shared a fair amount in common, but most people didn't see it that way.

Morrow might have deniability, which meant NCIS would survive it all just fine. Just he and Tony would be screwed.

"Prison for the rest of your life?" The man on the other end of the line chuckled. "That's your final decision?"

"You're trying to make me commit treason to keep you from going public with whatever else you think you have on me? Come on. You really thought for a second that would work?"

"Why don't you think about it, Agent Callen, and we'll talk again. Operation Breakwater. I know you have access to the information I want. Give it to me and my evidence disappears. You're home free."

"Not happening."

"Be at the same phone tomorrow at this time, Agent Callen, or the tapes make their way to the local news." The man severed the connection before Callen could refuse again.

If nothing else, he had one more day with his badge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2:** The fic is complete, so you can expect regular updates every couple of days.

**-2-**

Nate's eyebrows almost reached his hairline when G knocked on the door; G supposed he was entitled. His determination _not_ to discuss anything of substance with Nate was sort of legend around the place. "Talk to you?"

"Anytime." Nate gestured toward the chair opposite him. He leaned back, hands cupped loosely around the arms of his chair, and waited.

G bypassed the chair, pacing the length of the desk and back again. He pulled a pen from his pocket, twisting it between his fingers, and paced back the other way, pausing long enough to close the door. "I need advice. _Not_ psychoanalysis. Advice."

"Okay." Nate gave a small nod, gesturing G to keep talking.

He did, but not right away. "You know how my last case in DC ended?"

After a second or two Nate nodded. "The suspect was killed when your team tried to bring him in."

"By me." He got another nod. "This… this doesn't leave this room."

"Of course not."

"Even if it involves a crime being committed?"

Nate leaned forward. "As long as you're not telling me you're planning to harm yourself or someone else." He rested his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands in front of him. "Callen, if that's the case, I would have to report it but I don't want that to dissuade you from telling me whatever you came here to tell me."

"Is it ever going to sink into your over-educated brain that I have no intention of getting myself killed?" G ceased pacing and folded his arms over his chest. He leaned against the wall, still unwilling to sit down. He found small consolation in the fact that Nate didn't have a couch. "I'm not looking to kill someone else, either. I already have."

He raised one eyebrow, watching Nate carefully to see if and when he pieced it together. It didn't take him long.

"I'm assuming there's something about this death that didn't make it into the report Agent Gibbs filed."

"Yeah."

"You want to tell me what?"

G swallowed. This was a conversation he'd managed not to have with anyone. DiNozzo had put two and two together on his own. He'd understood, but he'd still had no choice but to go to Gibbs with his conclusions. From there, Gibbs had taken over. They'd never talked about it, and even when Morrow had informed him he was being transferred, the Director hadn't asked. He'd never had to own up, not until now.

"He was involved in human trafficking, selling kids into sex and slave trades. Over a dozen kidnappings that we knew of in the US, and God only knows how many overseas. Most of them were orphans—before he died he told me he figured they wouldn't be missed as much, that we wouldn't care so much about finding them."

Nate nodded but kept his mouth shut, for which G was grateful. Most of this was in the file Nate would have seen already and he could have interrupted. G figured Nate was just glad he'd finally opened his mouth.

He needed Nate to understand the reasons.

"We spent three weeks, during which two more kids went missing, trying to nail this guy. And in the process, some key pieces of evidence were compromised. He was going to walk. We still had to bring him in; no way was Gibbs going to let it go without a fight."

Nate only nodded again.

"I caught up to him first. DiNozzo was maybe a minute away from me. He stopped running, put up his hands. He was armed but he wasn't going to fight. There was no reason for him to. There was no way in hell we were going to get a conviction and the son of a bitch knew it."

G pushed off the wall, fists clenched by his sides. Nate leaned back, keeping the same amount of space between them, which G appreciated. It was starting to feel a little suffocating in there.

When he didn't start talking again, Nate asked, "What happened?"

"I shot him." Not that Nate didn't already know that was how the story ended.

"Callen, anyone could snap under those circumstances. Particularly with your background, being one of those children he believed wouldn't be missed, it's not surprising—"

"I didn't snap, Nate." That was the problem. If he'd snapped, he could have handled it. He'd have taken a psych leave, suffered through talking to someone who would probably have been a lot less tolerable than Nate on his worst day, and eventually gotten back into the field. It would have been a black mark on his record, and a tough one to overcome, but he could have lived with it.

After all, everyone other than Sam—and sometimes even him—had a habit of looking at him like they expected him to snap. Who would actually have been surprised if he did?

But he hadn't.

"I made a conscious decision, Nate. I knew he'd walk and I couldn't let that happen. And whatever the consequences, they were worth it."

"Are we talking about premeditated murder here?" Somehow, Nate managed to keep his voice even and unaccusing. He was a pretty decent actor.

"Premeditated, no." G shook his head. "Murder, yes. Second degree, probably, though who knows what other charges they can tack on. Conspiracy… God only knows what else."

Nate drummed his fingers on the desk. "Setting aside the obvious issues here, why are you bringing this up to me now?"

"I'm being blackmailed. He's demanding files that he knows I have access to—top-secret information on undercover Naval Intelligence ops around the world—in exchange for destroying recordings he has. I can't give him what he wants but—"

"But refusing him means you go to prison and DiNozzo, Gibbs, maybe even Morrow watch their careers go down the drain."

"Right."

"And you've been so kind as to bring me into this as well." Nate cracked a smile, keeping his words from being the stinging rebuke they should have been. He was protected, more or less, by doctor-patient confidentiality anyway.

"Yeah, I figured I could use some company."

"I can understand that." Nate leaned back again, most of his weight resting on his elbow on the arm of the chair. "Setting aside, as I said, the fact that I do think there are things you need to talk about here—maybe not psychoanalysis but I don't believe that a fundamentally good person commits murder without suffering emotional consequences—"

"Setting that aside," G snapped.

"Right. Setting that aside—though I intend to revisit it—you came here for advice. You're not sure how to proceed?"

"Right."

"Callen, if this person has a recording of a conversation in the field that implicates you in murder—and it's up to you to say how damning the evidence he has is, because I don't want to hear it for myself—then the chances are you're not the only one on his hit list. Sooner or later he'll come to someone who'll give in to save his own ass. You can't let that happen. Even beyond that, there's no guarantee he'll stop here. If there's something else you have that he wants, he won't hesitate to hold this over you until you end the situation one way or another."

"Yeah, I came to that conclusion myself."

"You need to bring this to your team. Let them work it like any case. You don't have to give them the details—you didn't have to give me the details. You'll need to tell them he has something on you, and you'll have to deal with that. You have an interesting history, Callen. No one's going to jump to any conclusions. No one will even need to know that it has anything to do with your career in NCIS."

"You really think they'll leave it at that?" G knew his team. He couldn't see that happening.

"Well, you might have some trouble with Sam but he's shown a willingness to let you keep your secrets. It might not be easy but if you stand your ground I think he'll let it go." Nate spread his hands. "Besides. I don't think you have much choice in the matter."

He didn't, and G knew it. "Thanks."

He moved to open the door but Nate's voice stopped him. "I still want to talk about this, Callen."

"Well, with any luck they'll drum me out of NCIS so fast I won't have to talk to you again."

"You know, comments like that aren't going to convince me that we don't need to talk about this."

"Gone three years without talking about it." G pulled open the door, knowing Nate wouldn't press the issue when anyone else could hear.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2:** The fic is complete, so you can expect regular updates every couple of days.

**-3-**

If nothing else, G had caught one lucky break. Macy was gone for some federal LEO conference. By the time she came back he'd probably be on his way to federal prison. Maybe he wouldn't even have to face her.

Who was he kidding? She'd probably hunt him down.

G saw Nate come down the stairs, his eyes questioning. He really couldn't put this off any longer, not if he wanted them to be ready to move on this guy tomorrow afternoon.

"We have a case."

Eric raised an eyebrow but kept his mouth shut as he pulled out a chair and sat down. Kensi dropped down next to him. Nate hung on one side of the doorway and Sam leaned, arms crossed, against the wall on the other side. Hetty was nowhere to be seen, which of course wasn't by design or anything.

"Eric, I need you to see what you can get off a call that came in to this phone booth at thirteen hundred today." He slid a sheet of paper across to the tech. "There'll be another call tomorrow at the same time, so we'll need to be set up to trace."

"Tap?" Eric asked.

"No!" The words came out too forcefully, earning him questioning looks from all assembled. He forced himself to take a deep breath and curled both hands over the back of the chair in front of him. "There's no need for a tap. I'm the one taking the call." With no way to prevent the blackmailer from playing any more of the tape, he couldn't take the chance of his team hearing it.

"What's going on, G?"

G's eyes darted toward his partner before he could stop them. He looked away almost as quickly--which only left him facing Nate, which was nearly as bad. He finally settled on looking down at the table instead and told himself he didn't care what Nate or anybody else made of his body language.

"I'm being blackmailed. You don't need to know over what. All you do need to know is that he's demanding classified information in exchange for his silence. Obviously giving him what he wants is not an option, and I have to assume that I'm not the only one on his hit list." Who cared if he was borrowing from Nate? "We can't take the chance of him finding someone who'll cooperate. There's also a very good chance he's a fed of some kind, because I can't think of any other way he could know I even have access to what he wants." The only other person here who did was Sam.

"What's he looking for?" Kensi asked.

"Information on Operation Breakwater."

Sam let out a long, low whistle and G forced himself to look over at his partner. He swallowed hard when he realized Sam stared intently at anything but him. Fuck.

"You got any idea who it might be?" Sam asked, eyes still on the group rather than on G.

G shifted his gaze again to Nate, as the only one who was neither ignoring him nor staring at him liked he'd just kicked a sick puppy. Nate's attention shifted between G and Sam and back again.

"Other than that he's more than likely government, no." G shook his head. "That's what we need to figure out."

#

Nate watched Callen carefully, not missing the surreptitious glances he kept shooting toward his partner—or the way Sam kept his attention studiously on anyone and anything but Callen. As predicted, Sam was likely to be the biggest problem, which was unfortunate because Callen needed him as an ally more than anyone else.

When Callen dismissed them and Sam walked away with neither a word to nor a glance at his partner, Nate had to choose between making sure Callen was all right and talking to Sam. Knowing Callen likely wouldn't altogether welcome him at the moment, he chose Sam.

"I never really considered you a judgmental person."

Sam's back stiffened but he didn't turn around. "Not now, Nate."

"Everyone makes mistakes. Sam. He's doing the right thing now."

"He's got someone blackmailing him for top secret information. You know what that tells me, Nate? Tells me that whatever they got on him, it's pretty heavy. Maybe criminal kind of heavy."

"What if it is?"

Sam finally turned to look at him. "You know what it is, don't you?"

"I can't discuss it with you."

Sam crossed hid arms. "And the fact that G talked to you about it tells me it's big. Get out of here, Nate."

Deciding there was nothing more he could do right now, Nate went.

#

G reached for his weapon and almost had it tucked away into his holster when he heard Sam. It was the first time his partner had addressed him directly since yesterday afternoon.

"G."

"Yeah?" He looked up, reassured to see Sam looking at him, finally. It didn't last long though.

"You need to leave that here."

G stared at him. "What?"

"You can't bring your weapon. If anything goes down, better for everyone if it doesn't look like you just took the guy out."

G swallowed hard, twice, before he recovered his voice. "You're kidding, right?" He'd never gone into the field unarmed. And, yeah, maybe he was the victim here—as much as he hated ever having that word applied to him—but it was still work and he was still going into the field.

"No."

G glanced around quickly, noting that Nate was the only member of their team hovering nearby. He leafed through a file but it didn't take a degree in psych to know he was trying his damnedest to hear what they were saying.

Figured.

"It's a phone call, Sam. I'm not going in to meet the guy."

"Then there's no reason you need to carry anyway, is there?"

No, except for the fact that he never went into the field without a weapon. "There's no reason for me not to."

"You trust me to have your back, G?" What the hell kind of question was that? "I just want to make sure we do this right."

"What, you think I'm gonna try to take this guy out? Make it all go away?"

"You know that's crap."

G stared at him, hand still on the butt of his gun, the barrel halfway into his holster. Working his jaw, he pulled the weapon back out and moved to hand it to Sam. "You want my badge, too?"

Sam pushed G's hand back and then pressed both palms flat on the table between them. "Trying to protect you, G. Trying to protect all of us. If anything does go down, I don't want anyone coming down on you for murder, or us for trying to cover anything up." G flinched—he couldn't help it—and something flashed in Sam's eyes. Nate made to move toward them but G turned and stalked away before he had a chance to catch up.

#

Not only did Sam insist on G not carrying a weapon, he also demanded he wear a vest. G shifted, the weight of the vest uncomfortable and constricting—or maybe that was the knowledge that he was burying his career once and for all.

The phone rang and he waited until the last possible second to answer. "Yeah."

"Agent Callen."

"No, the other asshole you've got hanging around waiting for you to destroy his life. Or do you really have more than one?"

The man on the other end chuckled. "Nice try, Agent Callen. Now have you made a decision?"

"I'm tempted to take my chances. I don't particularly like making deals with the devil." He'd had to make them before—it went with the territory—and it always left a bad taste in his mouth.

"You're the murderer, Agent Callen, and you're calling me the devil?"

G's fist tightened around the phone in his hand. "Fuck you."

"What do you think is heavier? The charges hanging over your head or that vest you're wearing?"

Callen spun and flattened his back against the back of the phone booth. His eyes darted around, searching for anyplace someone might be watching him from, but it was impossible to spot anyone from his vantage point. He'd have to hope Eric got a trace.

"Now tell me. Was that your own idea, or are your friends still trying to protect you?"

"I'm not in the habit of making a target of myself."

"Nonsense. That's what you do best. You'll hear from me with further instructions, Agent Callen. And if I see any sign that you've involved anyone in this other than yourself, we'll see how inclined your friends are to protect you after they find out what this is all about." He hung up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**-4- **

Callen had left the vest out, hanging on the back of his chair. After he'd told them the blackmailer was watching him today, Sam had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't leaving the building for anything remotely connected to this case without a vest. Kensi and Eric had backed him up, and Hetty had put the final nail in the coffin. Nate had just watched their interaction. He hadn't decided how he felt about Sam's refusal to let Callen carry a gun. He understood the reason for it, and he couldn't deny it was probably the best way to approach this.

It certainly wasn't doing any good for Callen's state of mind, though, and that was Nate's primary concern at the moment.

He kept his mouth shut as they gathered around the table. Callen sat down first and Sam parked himself neither next to nor across from his partner. "So we know he was in the immediate vicinity of Sunset this afternoon," Callen started, and Eric spoke up before he could say anything more.

"Which makes not a shred of sense since the trace put him in Washington."

"State?" Sam asked, and Eric shook his head.

"District. He's gotta have something rigged up bouncing signals around. Still trying to back trace it but I don't think we're gonna get anywhere on this go-round. Get him next time."

During the exchange, Callen never took his eyes off his partner, who never once looked in his direction. He considered it a bad sign that Sam was more interested in looking in Nate's own direction than at Callen.

Something in Callen's body language bothered him, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He'd taken Sam's refusal to let him carry a gun to heart. It was a trust issue, and trust was of paramount importance. It always was in law enforcement. Partners needed to trust each other, and Sam and Callen always had. They couldn't do what they did without an obscene amount of trust, and that trust hadn't come easy—especially for Callen. Sam's words, no matter the intent behind them, had conveyed a lack of trust that Callen wouldn't easily put out of his mind.

He couldn't say that Callen seemed devastated; Callen wasn't given enough to extremes of emotion for Nate to ever apply that word to him. He'd been hurt, though; even Callen wasn't immune to that.

Eric slid something toward Callen; Nate had to lean forward to see that it was a thumb drive. "This is a mockup, faked files. Enough detail that unless he knows something about Breakwater, he shouldn't be able to tell it's not the real deal. At least, until he puts it to the test."

"If he's good enough to get evidence on Callen—enough evidence that he thinks he'd have Callen over a barrel—he's gonna have a way to make sure Callen's not screwing him over." Sam leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. At the other end of the table Callen rocked back in his chair, a little stunned. Even Nate was surprised.

Sam rarely, if ever, used Callen's last name in the group like this. In the field, or with the higher-ups, maybe. But not like this.

Eric leaned back in his chair, arms folded, frowning. "Short of giving him what he's really looking for, and I'm pretty sure that the reason Callen even brought us into this is because he's kind of trying to avoid doing that, there's no way I can give him something that'll pass muster if this guy has actual information."

"Fantastic." Sam slid his chair back, scowling. "Well I guess there's nothing else we can do until Callen gets his further instructions. Let's call it a day."

He was gone before anyone had a chance to speak. Kensi and Eric stood silently, Kensi patting Callen on the shoulder lightly before she went to grab her gear. Eric shot an irritated look after Sam and then disappeared up the stairs. Hetty was still just staying out of it all.

It wasn't like her, but it wasn't a bad idea.

Palming the thumb drive, Callen finally hauled himself to his feet. Nate gave him about a minute's head start before following.

Callen approached Sam quietly, his soft footfalls barely enough to announce his approach. Sam didn't turn around and Nate hung back, not wanting to interrupt.

"You want me to resign? That it?"

Sam _did_ turn at Callen's words, really looking at him for the first time in a day. "That's bullshit, Callen."

"Just tell me, Sam. Whatever you want."

"I want to known what the hell you did that this guy has dirt on you."

Callen shook his head, keeping his eyes on Sam as he tossed the thumb drive up and down. "I can't tell you that."

"Then we're done here." Sam moved to step around him and Callen went to block him, dropping the drive in the process. They both bent and reached for it at the same time and Callen recoiled as their hands touched. Sam straightened, the wayward object in his hands, and gave his partner a questioning look. Callen snatched the drive from him and wheeled around without another word. Nate watched Sam stare after Callen for a moment before disappearing himself. It'd been a long day and he had some thinking to do.

#

"When you gonna tell me what this is all about?"

"Never." G turned away from the chair and headed for the door, currently blocked by Sam's forbidding—on the best of days—figure.

Yesterday sure as hell hadn't been a good day and today wasn't looking so hot either.

"Better for you not to know, Sam." Maybe if he could make Sam realize it wasn't his own ass he was trying to protect, he'd back off. He was going down either way at this point; it was only a matter of time. DiNozzo too, maybe. He didn't want to add Sam to that list. He stopped nearly chest to chest with Sam, who apparently wasn't as willing to let G keep his secrets this time as he had in the past.

"You know me better than that, Callen."

G flinched, and cursed at himself inwardly over his reaction. The last thing he needed was to let Sam see how much he was affecting him. He might not be able to control his reactions completely, but he could—and would—keep Sam from piecing it together. "I thought so, too." He moved to slip by his partner but Sam put an arm up to block the doorway.

"Not so fast."

G clenched his jaw and stepped back, halfway tempted to tell Sam what he wanted to know; at least then Sam would let him out of the room. He might never speak to him again, but… He shook it off. "You're the one who wants to protect the team, Sam. I'm trying to do the same thing."

Sam shook his head. "Nothing wrong with letting other people look out for you, Callen."

He flinched again and balled his right hand into a fist. Sam's choice of what to call him shouldn't hit him so hard; it shouldn't have affected him at all and it drove him insane that it did.

Sam drove him insane and that wasn't remotely okay.

"I look out for myself just fine."

"Yeah, I can see that. S'why you're getting calls from a blackmailer. Like being a traitor might be better than whatever he's got on you already."

G flexed and clenched his fist again. "We both know how this ends, Sam. This isn't someone holding an affair over me." Not that certain of his liaisons in the past wouldn't be fodder for blackmail, but… "You don't need to end up in prison with me."

"I've got your back. You oughta know that by now."

"Thought I did." G flattened his sweaty palm against his jeans. "Move."

"Not until you tell me what you did and what evidence he has." Sam widened his stance and crossed his arms.

G turned away and made a show of checking the room for other routes of escape. There was a window he might have been able to fit through—maybe—but Sam would kill him if he tried it, as tempting as the idea of escape at all costs was. "Move it, Sam."

"Not happening."

G spun back around, both fists and his jaw clenched. "You don't need to protect me."

"Somebody needs to."

"One more time, Sam." G almost closed the distance between them, the close proximity not cutting through the angry haze around his brain. "I'm not telling you so get the hell out of the way."

Sam inched forward until his elbows bumped against G's chest. "Not. Happening."

Next thing G knew, Sam was no longer in the doorway and his fist hurt like a mother fucker. His partner stood back against the wall opposite him, a hand over his jaw, his eyes wide. G opened his mouth to apologize but words wouldn't come. He slipped out the now open doorway, eyes on the floor, leaving Sam behind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**-5-**

Nate was getting himself a cup of coffee when Callen stormed into their kitchen and made a beeline for the freezer. He shoved a paper towel under the icemaker and it whirred to life. A few ice cubes and a couple more towels later, he pressed the makeshift ice pack against his knuckles. That didn't look good.

The only question was what else Callen had broken in the process of splitting his knuckles open.

He opened his mouth to ask, but stopped. He had a sinking feeling he'd find out what it was soon enough.

Soon enough turned out to be five minutes later when Sam walked in and did the same thing. Callen took one look at him, eyes clouded, and opened his mouth to say something but then thought better of it and left.

"What happened?"

"Callen's a stubborn son of a bitch."

"Yeah, he is." Nate shook his head. "Sam, he needs to handle this his way."

Ice held to his jaw, Sam turned toward him. "Nate, the last thing I need right now is you preaching at me how to handle my partner."

Nate let it go; part of being able to deal with these people was knowing how to pick your battles. He took his coffee, still too hot to drink, and followed Sam out of the kitchen. He caught Callen watching Sam from across the way, still icing his hand. He looked shaken, which was to be expected.

Sam had a tendency to lose his temper when a case hit a nerve. Nate couldn't remember, however, any occasion on which Callen had lost control. He wasn't used to it and snapping enough to punch his partner had to weigh on him.

It didn't help that he was stuck reliving the last time he'd lost control. And no matter what Callen had said, his decision to kill that man hadn't been a controlled choice. He'd been driven by emotions he couldn't deal with then, and the same was true now.

When Callen finally tired of staring at his partner, he turned and walked out. Sam headed in the other direction, apparently finally worn down—if only temporarily—by Callen's pigheadedness. After a second or two, Nate chose to follow Callen.

"I told you I wanted to talk to you about this."

"And I don't."

"I can put in a call to Director Shepard and see what she thinks."

Callen started. "What happened to confidentiality?"

"What you tell me stays between us unless I have reason to think you're a danger to yourself or someone else. I have to say, throwing a punch at Sam isn't doing a lot to convince me that you're not."

"I'm not gonna kill myself or anybody else, Nate. So you can drop it."

"Let me see your hand."

Unexpectedly, Callen allowed him to set aside the ice and examine his bruised knuckles. He hissed in pain as Nate pressed against the tender spots.

"Nothing broken."

"No kidding."

Nate dropped Callen's hand and stepped back, studying his colleague and friend. "You want to tell me why you hit him? Because I will speak to Shepard and have you ordered to undergo an evaluation." He didn't like throwing his weight around but part of his job was protecting these men and women and he wasn't going to let Callen stop him from doing his job.

He didn't believe Callen was suicidal or homicidal—their current situation notwithstanding—but he was still concerned about his stability. He didn't want to involve Shepard, not least because it would probably shatter whatever trust he'd built between himself and Callen and the rest of the team. Not to mention, Callen would be a lot more likely to talk to him if he did it on his own. Shepard's involvement would likely leave them sitting across from each other in uncomfortable silence.

Callen worked his jaw and sighed. "Fine."

Nate followed Callen to his office and dragged his chair around so the desk wouldn't be in between them. He sat back, coffee held in both hands, and waited for Callen to speak. It was a long time before the other man said a word.

"He cornered me."

"How so?"

"Blocked me in the equipment room and wouldn't move out of the doorway until I told him what I did."

"Why don't you want to?"

"As it is, I'm probably taking DiNozzo down with me. I don't want Sam to end up part of a cover-up too."

"So you're trying to protect him."

"And he's dead set on protecting me." Callen slouched down in his chair. "Hasn't figured out I don't need his protecting."

"He's your partner, Callen. It's in his job description, just like it's in yours."

"Fine. He hasn't figured out when I need protection and when I don't."

Nate smiled. "Better." He sipped his coffee and watched Callen run his fingers over his knuckles. "Is that the only reason you won't tell him?"

"What other reason would I have?"

"It's no secret that Sam holds himself to a very high moral standard. You've all taken lives before—though in the past it's been in situations where you had no choice in the matter. This is different, and less morally ambiguous. What you did is unacceptable—criminal—and not something Sam is likely to accept or forgive. Are you afraid of how he'll react?"

Callen appeared to give that some serious thought, and Nate couldn't tell whether it was because he genuinely had to think about the answer or because he just railed internally against the idea that he was afraid of anything.

He was afraid of something, and Nate felt that fear was at the heart of this problem. It had taken Nate all of a day when he first met Callen to nail it down. Callen feared abandonment. He'd never had anyone to grow attached to as a child, but he'd been with OSP long enough to grow attached to his team and Sam in particular. The very real possibility of Sam turning his back on him over this had to scare the hell out of him.

"Maybe."

"Tell me what happened before you punched him?"

"I told him I didn't want him going down with me. He told me he had my back, that I should have known that. I told him I thought I did."

"Why would you say that?" Nate almost regretted interrupting when Callen shot him an irritated look.

"You heard what I said last night."

Nate nodded and took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. "You asked if he wanted you to resign. You believe that?"

"I don't know. He won't let me carry—"

"You're trying to avoid having Sam implicated in a cover-up if this blows up; he's doing the same thing. He doesn't think you're looking to take this guy down yourself, Callen. It's not about trust. It's about Sam trying to protect both you and the team. Let's face it. If something went wrong and you were the one to shoot him, what does that look like?"

"I know." Callen straightened, clenching and unclenching his left fist. "But if I'm out there and I can't defend myself, that puts everyone else in danger."

"You have to trust your team, Callen. You go into all sorts of situations—some where you aren't armed—and you trust them to have your back and look out for each other. You need to trust them here as well."

"It's not trust."

"Then what?"

"This is my job, Nate. This bastard put me over a barrel. He's gonna ruin my life—or finish what I started—and Sam's tying my hands."

"You feel useless."

Callen shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Maybe."

"Sometimes you have no choice but to let someone else fight your battles, Callen. It isn't easy, but now and then it's necessary. You're in a difficult situation here but Sam's position is equally impossible. He can't protect you from this, not really, so he's doing what little he can manage."

Nate allowed that to sink in before redirecting the conversation. "You're not acting like yourself, and given the situation that's not exactly surprising—"

"How's that?"

Nate wrapped his hands tighter around his coffee cup. "I don't recall seeing you lose your temper like this before. It's not like you and, quite frankly, this is the kind of thing that worries me."

"Everything worries you."

Nate laughed and Callen even cracked a grin, though it disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. "Maybe. But uncharacteristic outbursts of aggression really worry me. Can you tell me what happened right before?"

"I told you."

"In detail."

Callen let his head fall against the back of the chair. "We went back and forth, me saying I wasn't telling him and him demanding that I do. I got in his face, he got in mine, and next thing I know, he's holding his jaw."

"So you don't remember hitting him?"

"I remember. Just… didn't really think about it before I did it."

Nate downed half his lukewarm coffee and let Callen's words play over in his head. There was something he was missing here; it hovered just out of reach in the back of his mind. "You said he got in your face. How?"

Callen gave him a quizzical look. "Why?"

"Humor me."

"I already am."

Nate shot him a pointed look. "Keep doing it, then."

"Yeah, yeah." Callen waved a hand. "I tried to back him down but Sam's got that intimidating thing down a heck of a lot better than I do. He just… got in my face."

"Physical contact?"

Callen's eyebrows furrowed and he looked away before he answered. "Maybe."

"How physical did things get?"

"Other than me trying to break my hand on his jaw?"

Nate set his coffee aside. "Other than that."

Callen shrugged. "He barely touched me."

"And yet you punched him."

"He had me trapped in a small room with a window my shoulders would barely fit through."

While Nate could understand the need for escape—Callen was forever in motion—there was more at work here than that. He just wasn't sure what. "You suddenly claustrophobic?"

Callen threw up his hands. "This is ridiculous. You got your talk, Nate." He stood and had a hand on the door by the time Nate rose and reached past him to hold it shut.

They were chest to chest—sort of, anyway; Nate had a few inches on Callen. And his office was likely smaller than wherever Sam had cornered his partner. But Nate saw nothing but irritation in Callen's face. "We're not finished yet."

"The hell we're not."


	6. Chapter 6

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**-6-**

Nate closed the distance between them, backing Callen up against the door. He steeled himself for Callen's reaction, whatever it might be, but no reaction came.

"Back off."

"Not just yet."

Callen worked his jaw, no doubt trying to come up with a way to drive him off, but apparently came up blank. "What point are you trying to make?"

Nate did back off then, dropping easily into his own chair, confident that Callen wasn't going anywhere just yet. "That you don't ordinarily react to physical contact with violence, and you still don't. It just seems to be Sam."

"It was one time. I'm a little tense. If you want me to apologize to Sam—"

"Whether either of you apologize isn't my concern. I'm not a third grade teacher. I want to know why it happened, Callen. You were tense, but you're still tense now and nothing in your body language a second ago suggested anything more than irritation." He weighed his words carefully before going on. "You reacted strangely to Sam last night, too."

Callen looked away, but not before Nate saw the recognition in his eyes. He'd known Nate was there the night before—he'd said as much earlier when he'd referred back to asking Sam if he wanted his resignation. It just hadn't occurred to him that Nate would have seen what happened after that.

"I'm wired, Nate. That's all it was."

"Which is why you won't look at me. And why you've barely taken your eyes off Sam the last couple days—which is safe, because he won't look at you."

Callen's Adam's apple bobbed but he said nothing.

"I've seen you run from explosions and gunfire, Callen, but that's it. You ran last night. After the slightest contact with Sam, you ran."

"I didn't run."

Nate resisted the urge to roll his eyes, though he really wanted to. "Fine. Literally, no. But you fled. You got out of there so fast Sam's head was spinning. You think that was a normal reaction?"

Callen made no effort to answer.

"Okay. All I'm trying to get to here is the reason for that."

"It doesn't matter." He still looked anywhere and everywhere but at Nate.

"It does, Callen."

"It's my business, Nate. Not yours. It's got nothing to do with work, nothing to do with this case. It's personal."

"It became my business as soon as you decked Sam. Whatever is going on here is causing problems here, with this case. And now is a really bad time for something personal to overflow into the office." He leaned forward. "Whatever you tell me here stays here, personal or otherwise."

"Until you try to lord Shepard over my head again?"

Nate met his gaze. "I'm sorry about that, but my priority is to protect you guys, Callen—even from yourselves and each other. This is getting out of hand and if I have to bring Shepard in to deal with it, I will. I don't want to, and if you talk to me that doesn't have to happen."

"I'm not a danger to myself or anybody else."

They kept coming back to that. It frustrated Nate to no end that Callen had such a hard time believing that people could care about him enough to worry after his emotional wellbeing even when things weren't at extremes. That was a conversation for another time, though, and one they probably wouldn't ever manage to have. He forced himself to stick to the more immediate issues. "You hit your partner for no good reason. That shows an inability to control your emotions—"

"I can control my emotions just fine," Callen somehow managed to say through clenched teeth.

"Which is why you ran from your partner last night and punched him today. Callen, whatever is going on his interfering in your work and it needs to be addressed before it gets any worse."

"Not by you it doesn't."

"Then by you and Sam." Nate didn't need to know what was going on, as much as he wanted to. If Callen could bring himself to talk to Sam about it and they could resolve whatever the issue was, he was fine with that. Things were tense enough for the entire team with this blackmailing thing; they didn't need some personal conflict making things worse.

"No."

Nate massaged his temple with one hand. "Obviously, this isn't something you can resolve on your own, Callen. It involves Sam and if you don't want to talk through it with me then he's the only other option that I can see."

"Or I can just deal with it myself."

"Which you've clearly been trying to do, without success. You can't always work things out by yourself, Callen, no matter how many times that's worked for you in the past." He gave his words time to sink in and tried to glean something from Callen's reaction.

Callen stared straight ahead, his eyes not apparently fixed on any one point. Callen wasn't given to talking—never had been. Nate had been placed in the uncomfortable position of performing the mandatory evaluation after the shooting that had ended Callen's tenure in DC, and they'd spent most of the session staring at each other in silence. Callen had answered his questions just enough to satisfy Nate that he was fit to return to field duty, and Nate had come away with no clue that the situation was as complicated as it turned out to be.

Nate had always been inclined to leave Callen to his partner. Sam seemed to be the only person who could get Callen talking, and Nate was comfortable that if Sam ever grew concerned about his partner's mental health, he'd report it. Now, though, he didn't have that buffer—Sam seemed to be part of the problem, probably unwittingly—and Nate didn't have Callen's trust the way Sam did, or once had.

"You said it's not about trust on your part. Is it that you feel Sam doesn't trust you?" Callen looked away from him, doing a remarkable impression of a pouty teenage girl. "If Sam knew this was about you killing Derring, then I could understand your concern. But he doesn't. He has no reason to think you'd deliberately try to kill this guy. So I'm not sure I understand—"

"I told you this is personal. It's not this case, it's not work. It's—"

"Personal. Right." Nate sighed. "Maybe I just need to talk to Sam."

"You know, you keep saying how nothing leaves this room but you threaten to talk to Shepard, Sam, whoever the hell else—"

"What you tell me doesn't go anywhere, Callen. If I spoke to Shepard it would be to tell her that I was concerned about your mental state right now and that I felt you needed some time out of the field. No specifics. And if I do speak to Sam, it'll be to ask him what he thinks is going on since I'm fairly sure he's noticed by now that you aren't acting like yourself. If he didn't pick up on it last night—and let's face it, he's a little too observant to have missed you hightailing it out of there—he'll have realized this morning that something bigger is going on. That's it. I respect your privacy, Callen."

"Then why don't you stay out of my private life?"

"If it wasn't interfering in your ability to work together, I would. Gladly. Contrary to popular belief, I don't like harassing you. If everybody here was well-adjusted and completely at ease with the shitty things we see every day, my life would be easy. But that's not the way it works. And when your private life interferes with your ability to deal with the crises you face at work—which, let's face it, are enough to drive anyone to drink, or worse—then it becomes my problem. I'd like to stay out of your private life, Callen, but I can't in good faith do that right now."

He was met with silence, so he kept going. Eventually Callen would talk just to shut him up. "You know how to back Sam down. He wants to know what's going on—that's just how he is—but he'll take no for an answer if you insist enough. What happened an hour ago wasn't about him pushing you to talk, or even cornering you. You didn't lose it until he touched you, just like last night."

Callen still wasn't talking, so Nate changed tactics.

"We can make this easy. You tell me why any physical contact with your partner suddenly incites panic—"

He broke off. Shit. There were two reasons he could think of, and neither of them made any sense. The look in Callen's eyes, though, told him it was one of the two. "Callen, did something… happen, that I should know about? Between you and Sam or… someone else?" Start with the worse option and hope for the best.

Callen stared in his general direction, though he kept his eyes low. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Judging by his reaction, he probably didn't. Nate held back a sigh, though his relief didn't last long. Now he had to deal with the other option. The first he was at least trained for; this was out in left field.

"Does Sam have any idea?" Callen swallowed but didn't speak; it was answer enough for Nate to know he was on the right track. "I take that as a no."

Callen finally shook his head. He stood, knocking the chair backward hard enough that it tipped precariously before settling back down onto all four legs. "I'm done. Go find someone else's head to mess around with." He had his hand on the knob and this time Nate didn't stand to stop him.

"Keep reacting to him the way you do, Callen, and he's going to figure it out."

"No. He won't." Callen didn't sound certain of himself.

"Right. What happened earlier—no way you'll lose it like that again."

"What do you want me to do, Nate?" Callen let his head fall forward, bumping lightly against the door.

"The same thing I ever want you to do. Talk to me."

"You have a lot of experience with sexual identity crises, Nate?" Callen finally turned and this time looked Nate in the eyes. "This isn't your problem."

"No, that's not where my experience lies," Nate admitted. No point in beating around the bush there. His profiling training had involved some but he hadn't dealt with the subject outside of that. "But you're my responsibility, Callen. You and Sam both. This has the potential to be a big problem."

"I can keep my hands to myself. All those sexual harassment seminars paid off. I know what constitutes red light behavior."

Nate waved him off. "Kensi's way more likely to end up with harassment suits filed against her than you are—though that definitely doesn't leave this room." That at least drew a half-smile from Callen, tight though it was. "That's not what I'm worried about, Callen. I'm concerned that your working relationship with Sam is suffering because of this."

"I'll deal with it." Before Nate could reply, Callen was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2:** Please note that this story takes place prior to last season. Gibbs is in Mexico, Dom is not around, Sheperd is Director, and Macy will pop in. I'm probably a little off with Hetty being around, but the show doesn't seem able to make up its mind about when she came into the picture anyway. G says three years, Hetty calls Macy her predecessor, whatever...

**-7-**

G spent the next two days trying to avoid both Sam and Nate—easier said than done on Nate's count, and all too easy on Sam's. He couldn't blame his partner for not wanting to end up with a black eye to go along with his bruised jaw.

More difficult to avoid than even Nate, and that was saying something, were the looks from Kensi and Eric. Both of them seemed to be giving him a wide berth, accompanied on all accounts by pitying expressions. It made him want to jump out a window—a thought he kept firmly inside his own head, lest Nate get any ideas.

"Addressed to Special Agent Callen. My, he really is enjoying this, contacting you here."

Callen accepted the plain white envelope from Hetty. "He knows we're trying to catch him."

"Are you?"

He looked down at her, startled. "Of course I am."

"You know he won't keep silent once you do."

"I know."

Hetty looked troubled, though she held his gaze. "If there is anything any of us can do—"

Callen shook his head. "I brought this on myself and, for what it's worth, it's worth the consequences. I'm just sorry it's come to this." His stomach twisted. "None of you should have to deal with it."

"In a time of crisis, personal or national, family and friends bond together in support of each other. While I admit your colleagues are in a somewhat precarious situation given the likely nature of your transgressions—and please forgive me if I'm mistaken—"

He couldn't be sure—he was rarely sure of anything where Hetty was concerned—but he thought she was alluding to the fact that one of them, most likely Sam, would be arresting him when all was said and done. "You aren't." No point in lying; he'd already told Sam as much anyway.

"As I was saying, the situation is unfortunate but even were that not the case, we would still be dealing with it. Like it or not, Mr. Callen, you've found a family here. And you'd probably serve yourself better by welcoming the help than pushing it away."

"It's better for them if they don't get involved."

f"You're involved. They're involved." She patted him on the arm before leaving him alone. He watched her go for a moment before retreating to his own desk to open the letter.

_Special Agent Callen:_

_Leave the disk in the top locker, third from the left, in the men's locker room at Equinox Fitness on Wilshire by thirteen hundred hours, but no later than noon, on Thursday. You'll hear from me again once I've verified the data is accurate._

Sam was right, which meant they had to catch this guy when he went to get the disk. As soon as he found out it was faked, any chance of controlling the situation would go out the window.

He was screwed either way, but he didn't really want to make a public spectacle of himself if he could avoid it. If this son of a bitch wanted to contact the President, fine. He just didn't want to see it on the evening news.

He found Eric hammering away at his keyboard upstairs, headphones on and music so loud G could hear it from across the room. Eric almost jumped out of his skin when G tapped him on the shoulder. "See what you can do for surveillance." He left the note with Eric and went to find Sam to tell him what was going on.

G found his partner beating the hell out of a heavy bag in the weight room. He hung in the doorway for a second, trying to hold onto his composure. Sweat dripped down the back of Sam's neck to his already soaked t-shirt. He danced around the bag, sharp blows making it swing wildly away and back towards him, almost like an opponent lunging in to strike. G could hold his own even before he met Sam, and his partner had taught him a thing or two in their time working together, but he didn't have anything on him.

"You gonna stand there and check out my ass all day or get your hands dirty?"

G started, his pulse starting to race at Sam's jab, unintentionally so close to the mark it hurt. He should have been glad Sam was making an effort at normalizing things between them but it was all he could do to keep the cringing to the inside. "Eric's trying to set up surveillance for the drop. Tomorrow at noon."

Sam headed toward him, sweat-drenched shirt clinging to his chest. G leaned against the doorframe, trying to appear nonchalant. He wasn't kidding anyone; he'd been wound tighter than a spring since the guy had first made contact and Sam's presence wasn't helping matters.

Especially not like this.

"Where?"

"Equinox on Wilshire."

"Locker room?" Sam grabbed his towel from the floor and slung it around his neck, holding tightly to both ends. He still kept an uncomfortable distance between them, for which G was actually grateful this time, but at least he was looking directly at him instead of anywhere and everywhere else.

"Yeah."

"They're not gonna let us put in cameras."

"Eric'll work something out to satisfy them. I'm gonna head there, after this, to check the place out."

"You do that."

G waited for the reminder to wear a vest but it didn't come. "Thought I'd let you know."

"Thanks." Sam worked his jaw, twice opening his mouth like he planned to say something only to close it again in silence. Finally he did speak. "You're my partner, G. Never left me cold like this."

G took a step back as Sam moved toward him. "It's for your own good."

"Let me worry about my own good."

He needed to get out of there. "You can't save everybody, Sam. Least of all me."

"Maybe if you'd let me."

"Sam, I would love to. I wish you could." He looked past his partner to the still-swaying bag. He wished to God there was a way out of this, some way that wouldn't end with Sam looking at him like he did the people they arrested in every day, but there wasn't. "You can't." He turned to go but Sam caught up to him before he could round the corner. Sam jerked him back around, all but pinning him to the wall, and G fought the urge to fight him off.

"Whatever you did, G, you're my partner. Let me know when you remember what that means." Sam released him and G didn't take the time to try to decipher the look he saw in Sam's eyes before he took off down the corridor as fast as he could without actually running.


	8. Chapter 8

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belonfg to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2:** This is kind of a short chapter. Sorry, folks!

**-8-**

Eric was, it turned out, unable to convince the club management that he could set up surveillance in a way that wouldn't jeopardize their members' privacy and they couldn't get a warrant without divulging more information than either Callen or Sam were willing to cough up. That left them with Plan B: Sam planting an unauthorized micro camera on one of the restroom stalls across from the locker in question.

Kensi had tried to find out who rented the locker being used for the drop and, only after using much of her considerable charm had the desk clerk admitted that it wasn't rented.

So now Nate and Eric were watching the feed with Sam and Callen out in the field ready to move if anyone made a try for the locker. Kensi was backup.

"Why couldn't he have chosen the women's locker room?" Eric asked as he zoomed in more on the locker in an effort to shield their eyes from the men, many of whom looked like they needed to make better use of their fitness memberships.

"Callen, Eric's wondering why this guy chose the men's room for you to make the drop."

Eric's face flushed as Callen's voice came back over the mike. "I'll be nice and not wonder aloud what that says about Eric that he had to ask."

"Well it is you we're talking about, G. I guess I can understand the confusion."

Nate winced inwardly at Sam's remark. He knew it was meant in their usual joking manner but he wasn't certain, with things the way they stood for Callen right now, how he would take it.

He needn't have worried. Twenty seconds later Callen came back with, "I kind of see your point, _partner_."

"Cute, G."

Kensi stepped forward and Nate, with nothing to do at the moment but listen and watched, focused on her as her eyes skipped across the screen, checking out all corners of the narrow view as the locker room filled with men in sweat-soaked t-shirts. "All right, guys, look alive. Thirteen hundred."

"Men's room," Eric muttered again, halfway under his breath. "Looks like a class just let out. Which makes sense, since it is the end of the lunch hour."

The irritation in Callen's voice bled through the microphone. "Which means he checked the class schedule and picked this time intentionally. Keep an eye on everyone but especially look for anyone who doesn't look like he just came from a workout."

Nate joined Kensi in front of the screen, eyes tracking anyone who came within five feet of the drop locker—and there were many. Men retrieved their belongings from lockers on either side but the object of their attention remained untouched.

After forty-five minutes, Nate, Kensi, and Eric started rotating on and off; it just got too difficult to keep focused after that length of time. He eventually lost track of time all together to the point Callen startled him when he said he was going back in. They'd planned to check the disk every two hours. Hourly intervals would have been safer but Callen and Sam hadn't wanted to risk scaring the blackmailer off.

"Be careful," Kensi murmured. She had her hands in her pockets but tension riddled her body in spite of her casual posture. "God, I hope we didn't miss him."

Callen's curse a moment later, loud and clear over their connection, was all the answer any of them needed.

#

"You look like hell."

Sam shot Nate a look as he held the door open for him, but said nothing. Nate followed him inside and the two of them headed straight for the coffeemaker. They had their priorities, after all.

He dumped three sugars and a fair amount of cream into his coffee and stirred it, killing time until Sam finished, and walked out with him heading for the conference room. Their failure to catch the blackmailer when he moved on the locker the day before guaranteed this to be a bad day.

He had no idea how bad until he walked into the conference room a stride behind Sam and almost walked into the other man's back when he stopped short. He stepped around Sam, squeezing through the doorway, and did his own double-take.

A handgun and badge sat on top of a single sheet of paper in the center of the table. He didn't need to read the letter to know who they belonged to.

Shit.

Callen's letter of resignation was printed on NCIS stationery. It started with the usual formal language: he was resigning, effective immediately.

It was the next paragraph that set warning bells to clanging inside his head.

_I'm sorry. I just don't see any other way out. The outcome is unavoidable and I won't take any of you down with me._

_Thanks. And good-bye._

"Nate, what—?"

He already had his cell phone out, his finger on the speed dial set for Callen, when he turned to see Sam doing the same. "Does he have an off-duty weapon, Sam?" Of course he did; this was Callen.

"Like ten," Sam said grimly. He snapped his phone shut a second after Nate's own went to voicemail. "Have Eric try to track his cell's GPS." He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. Nate didn't need to ask where he was going.

He took the stairs two at a time, calling Eric's name all the way up and trying to ignore the twisting in his stomach. All of Callen's insistence that he wasn't a danger to himself, that he had enough people trying to kill him and wasn't interested in helping anyone finish the job—had he let himself be taken in by it, failed to help Callen the way he needed to?

Eric didn't ask why he needed Callen's GPS, and cursed a blue streak when they couldn't pick up a signal. Sam answered his phone halfway through the first ring and cursed more than Eric had when Nate told him they'd hit a wall. He ordered them to keep trying, and to put an APB out on Callen's car, even though it was likely at his motel and useless to them in tracking him down.

Sam called in before Nate could get out the APB; Callen's car was exactly where they'd expected it to be, in the lot of his current motel. His room was empty, his things gone and the bed made. Sam had a few more places to check but he ordered an APB on Callen himself.

Nate issued the APB while Eric tried everything he could think of, things far exceeding Nate's own understanding of technology, and then dropped into a chair with his head in his hands.

He'd known for days that Callen was in trouble; just the fact that he'd walked into Nate's office on his own was a red flag and Nate should have paid it more heed. He should have gone after Callen last night when he stormed out, or at the very least insisted that Sam follow him.

But he'd let Callen go, told himself the man needed space as he always did, and would be fine come morning. He was stressed and trapped all day in a building with people who wanted desperately to know his deep, dark secrets. Who wouldn't need room to run?

He should have known better.

#

Sam called in every half hour, sometimes more frequently, and eventually rolled back in around fifteen hundred. By that time Eric had exhausted every avenue he could think of at least three times. Nate had called Tony DiNozzo, who had heard from neither Callen nor the blackmailer but promised to let them know if he did. Kensi had hidden Callen's weapon, badge and resignation away somewhere without telling any of them where she put them, and Hetty had seemed to stay perpetually on the edge of the room, watching them all.

She'd tried to talk to Nate, twice—probably to tell him it wasn't his fault and that he'd done as much as he could for a man who didn't want his help anyway. Or maybe she was going to tell him he could have and should have done more. He didn't know because he'd walked away every time she approached. Now he knew how Callen felt.

Sam looked as worn down as Nate felt when he dropped into the chair in Nate's office, the same chair Callen had taken during their last real session when he'd insisted, again, that he wasn't a danger to himself or anyone else. "This isn't him."

"Sam, Callen's going through a lot right now. He's not… you can't expect him to react to anything the way he ordinarily would."

"You really think he'd…"

Nate studied his hands. "I'm not sure I'm the one you should be asking. I didn't think so. But that letter…"

"G wouldn't kill himself. That's the easy way out. It's not what he does."

Sam didn't sound all that convinced, and Nate couldn't find it in himself to try to convince him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AUf

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2:** You guys got a nice long chapter here so enjoy it while it lasts!! It was just... I couldn't break this scene up, and not only because y'all would probably kill me if I did ;-) You'll see what I mean.

**-9-**

At eighteen hundred the next afternoon, after nearly forty-eight hours without a word from either Callen or the blackmailer, Sam walked into Nate's office looking less rundown than he had since they found Callen's resignation. "Don't say anything but I've got an idea where to find G. I don't know if I'm gonna have any luck. Maybe I'm grasping at straws but…"

"Let me know if you find him?" Nate asked.

"If I can. I'm… cell service is shoddy up there so… If I don't find him, I'll be back tonight and I'll give you a call."

"Thanks." Nate wasn't much for praying, and he wasn't much for relying on luck, but he crossed his fingers as Sam left and said a prayer not for the first time in two days.

Not two minutes after Sam walked out, Kensi appeared in Nate's doorway with her arms folded across her chest. "That wasn't a suicide note."

"Excuse me?"

She shrugged. "Callen's not going to kill himself."

Nate raised an eyebrow. "Any… particular reason you've come to that conclusion?"

"Because if he kills himself I can't kick his ass for being stupid enough to resign and scare the hell out of us in the process."

"Well, if he's not going to kill himself then there's no reason for you to be worried about him, right?"

"You're deliberately missing the point here, Nate."

"I know I am. Kensi—"

"Don't. Say. Anything." She turned on her heel and left.

#

G poured himself another glass of expensive Scotch and dropped a few bills on the counter; the least he could do was pay for the drinks if he was using Sam's electricity.

He stretched out on his side on the couch and pulled the hand-knit afghan over him. The Scotch burned its way down his throat, the warm buzz it brought with it more than welcome. Even in the midst of a California summer, there was still a noticeable chill in the air up in the mountains. He was trying to use as little electricity as possible; he didn't want to turn on the heat.

He could, he supposed, but he'd have to leave Sam some money for utilities and he was running low on cash. He should have taken more out when he hit the ATM before leaving LA but he hadn't been thinking. And he didn't want any activity they could track until he was ready to move on. He just needed a couple more days to figure out what he was going to do next.

He'd been up here once before, about a year ago, and was honestly surprised he'd found the way on his own. They'd come for a week of fishing, escape from the big city—Sam hell-bent that G learn what a family vacation could be like, since he'd never had one. It'd been fun, even though they'd cut it short by two days when a case demanded their return to LA. They'd had to kill a couple hours after getting the call, neither sober enough to drive when it came in. He smiled at the memory and took another long draw from his glass.

G hadn't taken a vacation since then, or before. He pretended it was Gibbs' influence—hard to work with the man and not pick up a few habits, good and bad. But the truth was, he'd never had anyone to vacation with so there just wasn't a point.

He'd fallen asleep easily the last two nights—mental and emotional exhaustion winning out over the constant swirl of thoughts inside his head. Tonight, though, it wasn't that easy. He rolled over, letting his foot fall to the floor with a thud he felt through his sock-covered heel.

His resignation had been rash and, in hindsight, probably stupid. Too little, too late. His friends… his partner were already implicated. Hell, by taking off he'd probably only made things worse. It was only a matter of time before the story broke and there was a warrant out for his arrest. Maybe his next stop should be somewhere outside the country. Maybe he should pay Gibbs a visit in Mexico.

Or maybe he should just turn himself in. Turn himself in to someone other than Sam.

It had been a long time coming, long enough he'd almost put the thought out of his mind. When Tony came out of nowhere, searching for Derring's pulse and his weapon—the pulse gone and the weapon still where it belonged, where it posed no threat to G—he'd been ready to turn himself in.

It was worth it, whatever happened, knowing that bastard was off the streets. Derring couldn't hurt anyone else anymore and if it meant he lost everything, it was worth it. He risked his life every day to put criminals away; what did it matter if it was through death or a prison sentence?

He couldn't let Derring walk; he wasn't wired that way. Whatever it took to get the job done. Whatever he had to live with after the fact.

He'd told Nate it was a choice and he supposed it was, in a way. He hadn't lost it. He'd known what he was doing; he'd made the decision to pull the trigger, to fire a kill shot rather than blowing out Derring's kneecap or some other incapacitating part of his body. But it hadn't been a choice. There hadn't been any other option.

It didn't make it easy.

He flexed and tightened his hand, balling the afghan in his fist.

Nate had wanted him to talk. He hadn't believed that G had dealt with what he'd done; he knew he still carried the guilt. Nate had known it even when he couldn't admit it to himself. G had thought he put it behind him. He'd really believed that. But every time Nate insisted on talking, every time that son of a bitch called, it was like reliving it over and over again. And the honest truth was that he didn't know how much more he could take.

Nate meant well, and maybe he'd been right about G needing to talk about it. He never had, to anyone. He'd never had the guts to tell anyone what he'd done. But every time he so much as saw Nate, it was like the man twisted a knife in his gut.

And every time he saw Sam, the knife pushed even deeper. Sam was the only person—other than, apparently, Nate—that he could imagine talking to about this. And at the same time, Sam was the last person in the world he could talk to about this. Sam was a good person, fundamentally; he was the kind of person G wanted to be, the kind that G tried to be—the kind people thought he was.

But Sam would never understand. The law was the law. Rules were rules. He lived in a black and white world, and G's was painted in shades of gray that Sam could never see—that didn't even exist in Sam's world.

He'd been honest with Nate, and with Sam. He didn't want Sam implicated, and he didn't want Sam to have to choose between duty and loyalty. But he'd left out the selfish part.

He couldn't stand to look in Sam's eyes and see disgust.

It took him two tries to return his glass to the coffee table without dumping the meager contents all over the carpet. He rolled back onto his side and shifted the throw pillow under his head. Tomorrow morning, he'd turn himself in to the FBI. Sam was going to find out either way. At least G wouldn't have to face him when he did.

He closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the sofa cushion when the world spun a little. He must have had more to drink than he'd thought. Or it was just finally catching up to him. Maybe it'd help him sleep.

He'd almost dropped off when a sound outside had him rolling off the couch. He grabbed his off-duty pistol from the coffee table and rose up on one knee, blinking against the influence of alcohol and sleep. He flipped the safety off and aimed at the door.

Instead of breaking glass, he heard the soft scrape of a key in the lock. The door swung open and the light came on, and G let out the breath he'd been holding and replaced the safety.

Sam.

G rose slowly and returned his gun to the table while Sam sagged against the doorframe, his right arm hanging by his side, his own service weapon—identical to the one G had turned in—loosely held in his hand.

"Christ, G. You scared the shit out of us."

G dropped onto the couch and let his head fall back. "I just—"

"Left a resignation letter that reads like a suicide note and disappeared."

G's head came up and he stared, mouth open, at his partner. "What?"

"No other way out?" Sam quoted back to him. "You got Nate—and everybody else—convinced you're planning to blow yourself away." Sam glanced at G's gun. "I was kind of wondering myself."

G shook his head slowly. "Christ, Sam. I didn't even think—"

"Yeah, kind of noticed that." Sam stopped in front of him, the coffee table between them. "You really weren't?"

"No."

"Because… and I'm too tired to fight you on this so I'm not asking, exactly but… whatever you did, what this guy has on you? Is it something probably gonna land you in prison?"

"Yeah." That was safe, not anything Sam didn't already know. And Sam's mind would never go, on its own, to the idea that G had murdered someone in cold blood. Sam trusted him too much for that. Ironic.

"And you're willing to do that? You're just gonna let them lock you up?" When G nodded, Sam shook his head. "You can't stay in the same apartment for six months, G! How you gonna survive years in a cell?"

G swallowed. He drew one leg up to his chest and wrapped his arms protectively around his knee. "Maybe I won't." It was the reality of it, and they both knew it. He was law enforcement, a fed. People would line up to take a piece out of him. "I knew what I was doing when I did it, Sam, and it was worth it. Still is." Sam didn't need to know that, as easily as sleep had come the last couple of nights, he'd woken up a half-dozen times in a cold sweat, the clang of prison bars ringing in his ears.

"G, I'm gonna find out anyway."

Unable to escape Sam's close scrutiny, G did the next best thing and just looked away. "I'm not putting you in that position Sam." He would stick to his story, the one less likely to make him sound like a coward. It wasn't a lie, just not the whole truth.

Sam parked himself on the couch, legs apart and head back against the cushion, hands splayed on either side of his thighs. All he needed to do was reach out, make contact with Sam on his own terms.

And blow what was left of his life out of the water in the process. He tightened one arm around his knee instead and grabbed his drink, not quite empty, with the other. He tipped the contents down his throat quickly and heard Sam sigh.

"I knew suicide wasn't your style, G, but that note… and the way you've been lately, jumping at shadows… you don't seem like you anymore. I thought—"

"I'm sorry." He kept his eyes fixed on the north wall of the log cabin, where a photo of Sam and his brother, Sam in his dress blues, stood out from the other family photos. Sam, all honor and class, the same person then as now—just maybe a little more battered for the time that'd passed. He fancied himself important enough to Sam that the revelation that his partner was a cold-blooded killer would be another body blow, and at the same time hoped it wouldn't change a thing.

He wanted Sam, wanted to reach out to him so badly it hurt, but he couldn't do that to his best friend. Not before, when he couldn't afford the damage to their working partnership, and not now when his life was falling apart around him.

"I know you been talking to Nate," Sam said after a second. G tried to identify the strange note in Sam's voice. He sounded tired—not that G could blame him. He really hadn't meant to give the impression that he'd gone off the deep end but, now that he thought about it, he could understand. He needed to apologize to Nate. But there was something else, something beyond exhaustion or frustration. He sounded almost… jealous. "I know he knows."

He shrugged and eyed the bottle, still out on the kitchen counter. Not missing Sam's pained sigh, G headed for the kitchen and returned with the bottle in hand. He managed to pour half a tumbler's worth down his throat before Sam intervened. "Why Nate, G?"

"I needed advice, Sam. And he's… protected. Safe. He's a shrink; they're not going to send him to prison for keeping his mouth shut. You, they might. Would." They would. He believed that; he was hiding behind that belief.

"I'm you're partner. Partners trust each other."

"It's not trust, Sam." He finally straightened his leg, stretching his knee, unconsciously—or maybe consciously—mimicking Sam's position. His right hand settled less than in inch from Sam's. "We protect each other. S'what we do. Y'have to let me protect you this time." He slid his hand toward Sam's, allowing their fingers to brush, and steeled himself for his partner to pull away.

He didn't.

"I don't need your protection, G." Sam straightened a little and maybe even moved closer to G. Or maybe he didn't; maybe he imagined it. Wishful thinking.

G glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. His dark red t-shirt stretched, unintentionally tight—G had never had that problem—over his chest under his black leather jacket.

"Don't need yours either, Sam. Not this time." But God how he wanted it. He wished there was some way Sam could fix this like he wanted to. He wished there was some way he could, or Gibbs. But Gibbs had abandoned DiNozzo and the rest of his team and was sunning himself in Mexico, oblivious to the fact that G was hiding out in a mountain cabin like some fugitive.

He _was_ a fugitive; the government just didn't realize it yet.

He realized with a start that their fingers, rather than the tips just barely touching like they had a moment ago, were now intertwined. He didn't remember moving his hand but he must have, because his was over top of Sam's, their palms pressed together. And Sam still wasn't pulling away.

"Used to be when things got rough and Nate got pushy, we'd go out and get drunk and you'd talk to me enough to make him happy and back off."

There was no mistaking Sam's tone now. Hurt bled into every word. He had a right, too. It was all true.

Nate took his job seriously; G could picture the look on his face when he saw his resignation. He really did need to apologize for that. And G drove him insane because he resisted even the routine mental health crap that DOD put them through. If he'd ever thought about killing himself—really thought about it, not the occasional fleeting glimmer he knew they all entertained once in a while, when things got real bad—he'd have gone to Nate or Sam or maybe both of them for help. He just never had the need, and he didn't need someone trying to climb inside his head. His life, such as it was, was his life and no amount of talking about it was going to change the fact that he'd spent his entire remembered childhood lost in the welfare system.

"Most of the time I've spent talking to Nate was his idea, not mine," he offered after a second. "I couldn't… I couldn't talk to you about it. And when I punched you, I thought he was gonna have a field day."

"He had you locked in his office for two hours."

"Yeah." Miserable two fucking hours. "Sorry about that." He could still see the bruising, just barely, in the dim light.

Sam's grip on his hand tightened. "You want to tell me what that was all about?"

"You like being trapped inside a six-by-six room?"

"Jail cell won't be much bigger than that," Sam said after a second or two and G flinched. He tried to pull his hand back—this was dangerous and he could feel the ice melting beneath his feet with every inch he moved forward—but Sam held on tighter. He imagined he could feel the adrenaline shooting through his veins and he tried again to get himself free.

Sam was stronger.

"You trying to convince me I ought to just shoot myself instead?" The words came out before he could stop them, the force they carried more damaging than the blow G had landed on Sam's chin three days ago.

Sam released his hand instantly and stood almost as quickly. G was on his feet a second later, the room spinning wildly and threatening to knock him on his ass. By the time he regained his balance, Sam was already on the other side of the room, the expression on his face a mask similar to the one G saw in the mirror every day.

"I thought you were dead, G. And you're gonna say shit like that?"

"I'm sorry." He closed his eyes, because not having to see Sam made everything a lot easier. Seeing him… touching him, at all, even as comforting as their interlocked fingers had been up until a minute ago, was too much to deal with. "I'm a little off balance." Literally.

"A little?" Sam's tone of voice snapped G's eyes open. "A little off balance? You freak out when I hand you something. You punch me in the face for trying to find out what the hell is going on with you, and I don't even know what to call what just happened here a second ago. A little off balance? G, you're like a fucking yoyo, back and forth, up and down. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"You are." Again, the words came out on their own, unbidden and unwelcome. Sam stared at him, mouth open. The light from the kitchen was too dim for G to make out his expression but he could picture it in his mind without the help.

"I'm your problem?" Sam sounded incredulous, as well he should have. "G, I'm wracking my fucking brain trying to figure a way out of this for you, and I'm your problem?"

"Yes." G scowled at the floor. It hadn't done anything to him, other than give him a place to land when he rolled off the couch at three o'clock in the morning after a nightmare, but it was better than adding insult to injury and scowling at Sam. "Coming here was a mistake. I'm sorry you came all the way out here. I'm sorry I scared all of you. I'm sorry any of this even happened." He moved out from behind the table, heading for his duffel and rucksack. He'd have to go all the way down the mountain if he wanted to get a ride out, but it would be worth it not to be trapped here with Sam.

Trapped. No matter what he did lately, he felt trapped. How the hell _was_ he going to survive ten, fifteen, twenty years in federal prison?

The short answer was exactly what he'd said to Sam. He wouldn't. Maybe Mexico wasn't such a bad idea after all.

He bent, reaching for the shoulder strap on his bag, but a strong grip hauled him back upright and spun him around. He swayed a little and probably would have fallen backwards over his duffel if Sam hadn't held on.

"So help me God, G, I tore my damn hair out for two days looking for you. I'm not doing that again."

"Well, you don't have any hair to tear out."

Sam didn't appreciate the joke. More importantly, he didn't release G.

"Let me go."

"Not until you tell me what you're running from. 'Cause you don't run, G."

"Apparently now I do." He struggled in Sam's grasp but a limited intake of food and an excessive intake of alcohol, combined with the fact that Sam was stronger than him on a bad day anyway, rendered his efforts useless. "Sam, please…"

His grasp loosened but not enough for G to break free. At least, not enough for him to do so without hurting his partner, which he couldn't bring himself to do. Once was enough.

"G, you tell me what the hell is going on or I'm dragging you back down this mountain and calling Nate and telling him you've lost it."

"Nate already knows—" And damn him anyway, for poking around where he didn't belong.

"Nate knows what, G?" They were half in, half out of the kitchen and in the brighter light G could see concern in his partner's eyes—the kind of look Sam only ever shot him when he thought he wasn't looking. It was a Nate kind of look. He tried again to get free but Sam tightened his hold. "Nate knows what?"

"What?"

"Christ, G, where the hell is your head?"

"I have no idea," he answered honestly. Though he could, he supposed, say with certainty that it was on Sam.

"How much did you drink?"

G shook his head, then shrugged. "Don't know. Left you money to cover it."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Just buy me a couple drinks sometime."

"This is good stuff."

"Yeah, I can see that. Besides, I'm the one who bought it." Sam released one arm and tried to pull G back toward the couch. "Why don't you get some sleep and we'll talk in the morning."

"Nothing to talk about." G let himself be pulled. Sleep would be a good thing. More importantly, once Sam fell asleep, he could take off himself. He'd have to be careful but he was sure he could be quiet enough not to wake his partner.

But Sam stopped short and stepped in front of him again, face-to-face, chest-to-chest. "What does Nate know, G?"

G stared at him, his partner's expression so earnest, worried, that it made the guilt almost unbearable. What had he been thinking, coming here, coming some place Sam could find him? Of course Sam would find him here. "You."

Sam blinked. "What?"

G blinked. Had he said that? He certainly hadn't intended to. He tried to pull away, _again_, but Sam wouldn't let him go, _again_. He swayed and Sam resumed his two-handed grip. "What does Nate know, G?"

He stumbled backward and Sam came with him. The backs of his legs hit the couch and he stopped short. "Knows I…"

Sam rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath that G couldn't quite make out. "Knows you what, G?"

There was barely room to breathe between them and for the first time in a long time, that was okay. G flattened his left hand against Sam's chest, the same hand he'd been trying to push Sam away with, then curled his fingers in the thin material of his t-shirt.

"Want you." He couldn't stop himself from saying it, wasn't even sure he wanted to. He'd dug himself so deep a hole it didn't even matter anymore. "Love you." Before Sam had time to react, he leaned in and up, tilting his head back to bring their lips together.

At first Sam's entire body, right up to his lips, went rigid. Just as he was about to back away, apologize a half-dozen times and get his ass out of Sam's family cabin as fast as possible, Sam's lips parted under G's. G took the opportunity to deepen the kiss as Sam's grasp on his bicep loosened, one arm circling G to pull him in close.

He kissed Sam until he had no choice but to breathe—oxygen was, unfortunately, necessary to sustain human life, after all. He kept his eyes off his partner's face, down on their chests pressed together. "That." He swallowed. "That's what Nate knows."


	10. Chapter 10

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**A/N 2: **Don't get too used to this but y'all were so awesome in your response to yesterday's update that I thought I'd give you guys a bonus. It's not entirely selfless, because I'm not thrilled with this chapter and I'd feel bad making you wait a week for it, but...

**-10-**

G didn't know how long they stood like that, but eventually he extricated himself because he had to take a leak. He'd definitely had more to drink than he'd thought—than he'd intended to. While in the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror until his heart rate calmed enough that he no longer felt like a teenager. He drank a few handfuls of tap water and dried his face on a forest green towel he'd found in the cabinet, and felt a little more human, a little more sober.

He returned to the living room to find Sam in the far corner of the couch, a vacant look on his face. His stomach clenched—nothing to do with the liquor—and when he sat back down it was on the opposite end of the couch from Sam.

"G, I—"

"You asked," he interrupted. "I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to tell Nate but he figured it out on his own."

"I'm sorry."

G almost didn't ask what he was sorry for; he wasn't sure he wanted to know. But he had to. "Why?"

"I pushed you into that and I… I don't… I can't do this, G."

"You can't do what?" Maybe he had no right to be angry here—he probably didn't—but he was just the same. He was exhausted, emotionally spent, and wound tighter than a three-dollar watch. "Sam, I've kissed a few people in my lifetime, including one time that I don't really like admitting, a woman who wasn't interested. That was interest there, Sam. In case it escaped your notice."

"G, I'm not gay."

"So, what, you slipped and accidentally stuck your tongue in my mouth?"

Sam grunted as he hauled himself to his feet. "G, I'm a SEAL. We aren't…"

G blinked, the sting of Sam's words more sobering than a bucket of cold water. "And, what? I'm some pansy because I am?"

"Fuck. You know that's not what I mean." Sam looked terrible but at that moment G couldn't make himself care.

"Isn't it?" G leaned back, trying and failing miserably to release some of the tension from his shoulders. "Big, tough, Navy SEAL can't be a fag."

"G, I'm not calling you names here. I'm just—that isn't me."

"Fine. But don't give me some shit about being a SEAL." G slid down on the couch, stretching to take up the entire length, and dragged the afghan up to cover him. Somehow, with Sam's arrival, the place seemed to have gotten a lot colder.

#

Sam hadn't fallen asleep for a second. Even if G couldn't tell just by looking at him, which he could, he'd have known because every time he woke up during the night, every hour on the hour to the vibration of his cell phone—no point leaving the battery out anymore since Sam had found him—Sam had been awake and watching him. G had planned to sneak out once he was sober enough to get down the mountain without falling on his face, and once Sam was asleep, but his partner knew him too well.

So they'd ended up making the two-hour drive back to LA in awkward silence. G was more comfortable in Nate's office than he was on that drive.

He left his duffel by the end of Sam's couch and turned around to face his partner. "Now what?"

"Now I go to work. And you, suddenly unemployed, park your ass here for the day until I figure out if we can undo your stupid stunt. You go in there now and Kensi's liable to kick your ass."

"Fine."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Damn it, G. I'm serious."

"No kidding."

"You take off again and I will find you no matter what it takes. And you scare the shit out of Kensi one more time and I _will_ let her kick your ass."

That wasn't an idle threat. G wasn't scared of Kensi, exactly… but he wasn't an idiot either. He added Kensi, Hetty, and Eric to the list of people he needed to apologize to, though Nate still sat firmly at the top. It wasn't nice to make a shrink think you'd killed yourself.

"All right."

"I'm gonna find this son of a bitch, G."

"You have nothing to go on, Sam. And he's going to find out, soon, that the information I gave him was a fake. He probably already knows it was a trap. He has no reason to keep his mouth shut."

"The guy has resources." Sam shrugged. "But there's only one way he can verify that the data we gave him is fake. And that's by trying to root out our guys where they aren't. We bought ourselves a little time."

"Maybe."

Sam glared at him, but the expression was a little more good-natured than most of the glances Sam had sent his way since last night. "A little optimism, G?"

He forced a smile. "Right. The power of positive thinking." Which had gotten him so far in his lifetime.

"Better." Sam lingered by the hall leading to his bathroom for a moment and G steeled himself for whatever it was he wanted to say. But then he apparently thought better of it and silently disappeared down the hall.

#

"You didn't call last night. I assume that means you found him alive and well?" Nate asked when Sam appeared in his doorway.

"And stubborn and idiotic as ever. Didn't even occur to him how we'd read that letter."

"I was hoping that's all it was." Despite knowing that Sam would have called him if he hadn't found Callen last night, Nate—like the night before—barely slept. "He coming back?"

"I told him if he came in today Kensi'd kick his ass."

"Probably."

Sam crossed his arms, one shoulder leaning against the doorframe. "You got anything on this guy, Nate?"

"Not anything helpful. Callen's right—he's government or military, or has very close connections to one or both. He knows we set a trap for him; if he hadn't known, we'd have caught him. He probably suspects the information is faked; if he knew enough about Callen to be able to get dirt on him, he knows he's not going to commit treason to save his own ass."

"Then why do it?"

"That's the part I haven't figured out yet. He could just be waiting for an excuse to go public with the information he has—embarrass Callen and the agency in the process. It could be revenge on Callen, but he hasn't suggested anyone he thinks it could be, which tells me he doesn't recognize the man's voice. Doesn't mean he doesn't know him from sometime in the past, or that it's not someone who has a motive for revenge but never actually met Callen."

Sam was no longer listening, or looking at him. His attention was on the wall behind Nate, which wasn't remotely interesting enough to hold Sam's attention. "Why do you think G took off?"

"I think it was exactly for the reasons he gave—and then some." Nate weighed his words carefully, not wanting to give away anything Sam didn't already know or strongly suspect. "Callen committed a crime. I think we all realize that by now—"

"We realize. You know."

"Well, yes." Nate shrugged. "I'm sorry, Sam. I can't say I agree with Callen's decision to keep you in the dark about this but I can understand his reasoning."

Sam's eyes returned to the wall. "Moving on."

"Right. As I said, he committed a crime. Right now, you can't arrest him because you don't know what it was. Your hands are tied; you're protected from disciplinary action. He tells you what happened and you have a confession, at which point you have to choose. Your duty and your badge require you to place him under arrest; your partnership with him will conflict with that. I think he's afraid you'll let your friendship win out."

"You think he wants me to arrest him?"

"Obviously, no, he doesn't want to go to prison. Quite frankly, I'd think the idea terrifies him. But he doesn't want you jeopardizing your own career to protect him, either. He's bumping up against walls no matter which way he spins, and you're at the center of it." More than Sam knew, actually.

"No kidding."

Nate narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, trying to read Sam's expression—more easily said than done. Maybe not more than he knew.

"You know Callen, Sam. He has secrets and we've all known that for a long time. But he's still the person you've partnered with for years. He does what he feels needs to be done, and accepts the consequences. He always has and that's so ingrained in him nothing will change it. In this case he managed to dodge them for a while but if it catches up with him, he's willing to deal with that because he did what he believed he had to do. He'll do the same now. And right now, what he feels he has to do is protect you—and the rest of us—from the consequences of his actions. If he suffers for that, he'll accept it. Maybe not gladly, but he'll take it."

When Sam didn't reply, Nate asked, "Where was he?"

"My parents have a cabin up at Lake Arrowhead. We went up there last year, fishing. You know he never had a family vacation as a kid?"

"He had no family, Sam."

"Yeah but… you'd think… I know he lived in foster homes for a while."

"A foster home isn't the same as an adoptive family, emotionally or environmentally. There are success stories and there are horror stories, and most homes fall somewhere between the two extremes. I don't know what Callen's childhood was like, though I could hazard a few guesses, but it doesn't surprise me that he's not accustomed to family traditions the way you and I are."

Nate leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee, frowning when he realized it'd gone cold. He needed to bring in an insulated mug. During his last two sleepless nights, he'd tried, without much success, to figure out what Callen was running from. It went against his nature not to face something head-on.

He'd concluded, mostly because he had no other explanation, that he was trying to take time to think. He'd acted rashly in resigning—which was very much like Callen—and then had to figure out his next step. Nate didn't believe Callen would try to escape prosecution, but he wasn't sure what he _would_ decide to do. It was interesting that he'd gone to a place he associated with Sam.

Nate wondered—Callen hadn't given him a chance to ask and he wasn't sure he would have even if he'd had the opportunity—how long ago Callen had acknowledged that his feelings for Sam went beyond their partnership. He seemed accepting of it, particularly if he was still reaching out to Sam to get through this, and his escape to Sam's cabin suggested that he was.

"Where is he now?"

"My place. Until he takes off again."

"I don't really think he will."

"Up until eighteen hundred yesterday you thought he'd blown himself away."

"So did you."

"I'm not the shrink."

Nate narrowed his eyes and tried to remind himself that Sam was frustrated at the difficult situation and lashing out at whoever he could since he wouldn't let himself lash out at Callen. It wasn't working.

"Callen scares the hell out of me, Sam. I can't get through to him and I can't tell when I need to. You're the only one I've seen here who can. So what does your gut tell you? Is he taking off again or is he going to give us a chance to find this guy?"

"Let you know when I figure—"

Kensi materialized behind Sam. "Hey, have you guys heard from Callen?"

Sam raised an eyebrow at Nate before turning to Kensi. "Tracked him down last night. He's staying at my place."

"Good. We think we know how this guy got away with the jump drive Eric mocked up. Tell him to get his ass in here."

"G's not coming back until we nail this thing down, Kensi. Maybe not even then." Kensi opened her mouth as if to argue but Nate shook his head slightly and she sealed her lips. "What do you have?"

Nate followed them up to meet Eric, who had the footage from the health club locker room playing on two different monitors. Kensi started talking while Eric fast-forwarded through one of the incarnations, pausing about halfway through. "We know that no one touched the locker where Callen made the drop. I mean, unless the guy's a ghost, no way we missed it. HD doesn't lie. So he had to get it out some other way. There are three options, but to find out which he used, we need to get another look inside the locker." She made a face. "And we have to hope it's not option three."

Nate stepped up to the screen while Eric skipped through the second recording. He'd frozen it on a man standing to the left of the drop spot. He stopped the second on a man standing to the right. "You think they went through one of the other lockers."

Eric nodded. "Or the back of the drop. That's option three, and would mean we don't have an image of the guy. Even if it's these two, we're still pushing our luck. I'm trying to see if I can get at least a full profile of either of them from the rest of the recording but it's not looking good."

"We need you to go in there and check the locker for any way he could have gotten into it without opening it. I thought it'd be better if Callen did it but…" She trailed off and shrugged. "It'll at least let us know who to focus on or if we're wasting our time."

"On it." Nate watched Sam leave, watched Kensi watch him leave, and returned to his office to hope they came up with something that would give him something to do. Profiling based on actions without an identity was one thing, and he did it on a regular basis, but they had so little to go on he felt like he was bashing his head repeatedly against a brick wall. There were times he was tempted to fall back on Sam's method of dealing with stress—punching bags in the gym.


	11. Chapter 11

**ColdSpace616** - First let me say, I welcome criticism of my writing and the perspectives from which I write, but you should know I'll greet any such crit as an invitation to discussion. So here goes, and I invite you to PM me or leave me an email address or something. I hate not being able to reply directly to reviewers, and I just had to reply to your comments.

This wasn't meant to be a shortcut, and I'm sorry if it came across that way, but here's my thinking behind the kiss. G's in a lousy place right now. He's at least mildly intoxicated and, more importantly, he's emotionally wrung out. He's considering the possibility that the next time he sees Sam, it could be from behind bars. He's never had anyone he could really trust, so he can't bring himself to believe, as much as he's come to trust Sam, that he won't turn his back on him when he learns the truth. That kind of mental exhaustion, coupled with the lowering of inhibitions thanks to alcohol, can lead people to do things they wouldn't normally do--particularly as twisted up as G was in the cabin. You'll get a little more from G's perspective on this subject in this chapter.

G is unfairly angry, absolutely. But he's not altogether rational right now. He's too emotional, on too many fronts. As for Sam, he was taken by surprise, faced with his own reactions and trying to understand them, when he's also worried about G. And regarding the black and white/shades of gray thing... I'm thinking of Sam, here, in terms of how he was in the episode about the SEALs. The show has painted Sam as being about honor above almost anything. His honor, as a SEAL, defines him. Really glad you liked most of that scene, though.

**A/N:** Sorry it took so long to update. Holidays and all that. Plus, I got engaged!!!! :D

-------------------

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**-11-**

G had left Sam a note when he went on his usual run. He added a couple extra miles, the better to occupy his mind with something other than being furious at himself for putting the moves on his partner. Drunkenness was no excuse. He'd acknowledged how he felt a year ago, and accepted it months ago, and survived several nights of drinking far more intense than a few glasses of good Scotch, without breathing a word. He'd let his emotions get the better of him, and just at a time he couldn't afford to.

Nate would probably tell him that was precisely why he'd done it, but he didn't want Nate in his head at work, never mind off-duty.

Not just off-duty. He didn't even have a job anymore. Great call that'd been.

He'd only left a note because he didn't trust Sam not to check up on him and he didn't want him flipping his shit over a routine run, not to mention that he didn't feel like giving Kensi reason to hunt him down. He crumpled the note and tossed it in the trash, and then took his time in Sam's shower.

He ran his clotfhes through the washer and dryer—Sam had wanted him to stay here; he could foot the bill for his laundry—and then packed his duffel. He'd stayed because Sam had insisted but he wouldn't stay the night. Things had been awkward and stiff enough, and Sam didn't need to deal with that. He'd find somewhere else to stay, like always, and promise to keep his phone on for when Eric inevitably decided to track him down, probably at Sam's request. Or Nate's.

Or maybe he'd go back to the plan he'd come up with last night and just turn himself in. He hadn't decided yet.

Sam came home around nineteen hundred, bearing Chinese takeout. G obliged him, eating more than his share of lo mein and a couple of eggrolls, and while Sam put the leftovers—not enough to save, in G's opinion—in the fridge, he moved his things toward the door.

"What are you doing?"

G parked himself on the couch to pull on his boots and answered without looking up, "Leaving."

"Thought we covered that this morning."

"I'm not… taking off, Sam. I'm just not staying here. I'll leave my cell on; Eric can track me to his little heart's content. I'll even call you once I get a room and tell you where I am, if it makes you happy. But the last thing you need right now is me here." He returned his attention to his right boot, finished tying it and moved on to the left.

"G, about yesterday—"

He waited to reply until he'd finished and could stand without being likely to trip over his laces. "Sam, neither of us are talkers and that works pretty well for us so let's leave it that way."

"A little late."

G shook his head. "No, it's not. I was drunk and stressed and did something stupid. And just like every other stupid thing I've done—and let's not bother pretending they don't occur on a frequent basis—we're gonna laugh it off and forget it." He tucked his personal weapon, a Smith and Wesson .45, into his waistband.

"Sam, I'm sorry. None of this should have ever gotten this far. I shouldn't have covered it up back when it happened, and when this whole thing started I should have gone straight to Shepard and told her everything. Guess I let myself think for a minute that maybe we'd find a way to fix it. I was wrong, and I'm sorry I got you and everybody else involved in this thing. Now I need to do what I should have done three years ago… three days ago. Whatever."

Sam stared at him through narrowed eyes. "You talk too much, G."

He smiled. "Tell Nate you said that. He should get a good laugh out of it."

"You're turning yourself in," Sam said quietly.

G stilled, his hand on the deadbolt. "Maybe. To someone other than you."

"You don't have to do this."

He turned away from the door, keeping the smile on his face though he really didn't feel like smiling. "Yeah, I do. Because if I stick around it'll be you hauling my ass in, in handcuffs, and I'm gonna be selfish here and say that I don't want to do that."

"I don't either." Sam crossed to him slowly and before G knew it, he'd insinuated himself between G and the door. Trapped. Again.

Fuck.

"Then let me go and you won't have to. And I won't have to." He reached for his bag again but Sam caught him around his wrist, grip so strong that G knew that getting himself free would mean breaking his wrist. Just what he needed. "Sam, back off."

"You gonna punch me again?"

"Thinking about it." G swallowed and made a half-hearted attempt to tug his arm free. At first he thought Sam was letting him go but his partner's hand only slid down from his wrist to grasp his hand instead. G couldn't do much more than look at their intertwined fingers and shake his head. "I'm not drunk enough for this."

"Neither am I."

Sam's words drew his eyes upward again and this time G did wrench himself free, probably earning himself a nice bruise for the effort. "No. No fucking way. You freaked out last night like a girl on the morning after, over a damn kiss. You made yourself perfectly clear, Sam, that I'm the only fag in this partnership." A wholly unwelcome voice in the back of his mind reminded him there was no partnership, not anymore—that Sam wouldn't want one once he knew anyway.

Sam folded his arms across his chest. "Now who's acting like a girl?"

G scowled at him. "I'm just responding to your freak-out. And, I think, appropriately." This at least felt normal. At least, as normal as it could considering they were arguing—both like girls, truth be told—over a kiss. Over kissing each other.

His partner shook his head slowly. "G, the only way you're getting out of here is by going through me."

"Don't tempt me."

Sam widened his stance. "Like to see you try it."

Oh, there were only so many ways that could end, and all of them bad. Very bad. "Sam, you don't want this. I get it. And I'm not so fragile—despite what Nate thinks; you listen to him too much—that I can't take a little rejection. Dealt with it my entire life. I'm used to it. Hell, I'm good at it. So let's just stop here."

The only muscles Sam moved brought him a little closer to G. His expression turned a little hurt, but G knew him well enough—thought he did… hoped he did—to know that it was affected. Sam placed his hand over his heart. "I'm wounded, G. Sounds like you're saying I'm just like everybody else."

Despite himself, G grinned. "There is no one else in the world like you, Sam. And we thank our lucky stars for that every day when we walk into the office."

Sam shook his head slowly, the left corners of his lips curling up in a characteristic half-smile. "Keep it up."

"And, what? You're going to do worse to me than locking me up in federal prison for the next ten years?" G tried to keep the grin on his face but from what he could see, he hadn't quite succeeded.

"G—"

"You weren't okay with this yesterday. You didn't change your mind that fast."

Sam stepped over G's duffel and positioned his body at an angle that forced G back toward the wall. "Gave me a few things to think about." His Adam's apple bobbed. "You're my partner, G. And damned if I'm going to lose my partner like this."

"You can't just do this to try to make me stay." He swallowed, hard—difficult around the lump in his throat, and took two more steps back until he was flush with the wall. Sam pressed one palm flat beside G's shoulder, his posture a classic intimidation pose G had seen him use on any number of suspects.

"And what if I'm not?"

"Then your timing really sucks."

Sam raised one eyebrow. "So does yours."

G was expecting the kiss, more or less, but the way his own resolve to leave crumbled the moment their lips met caught him by surprise. Sam's hand slid down his side, his touch warm through the thin material of G's shirt, as he broke the kiss. "Stay."

As if he could have left after that.

#

Sam's couch was the familiar kind of comfortable. G had slept there any number of times—more times than he probably should have been willing to admit—and he knew how to avoid the occasional spot where the cushion had worn down enough that springs poked through.

Sam's bed was a whole different kind of comfortable.

He took advantage of the comfort and warmth, not to mention the fact that no longer having a job meant he didn't actually need to get up at the ass crack of dawn—even if his body was still programmed to—and stayed put as he listened to Sam shut off the shower and began to move around the apartment. He heard the phone ring and was tempted to ask who the hell was calling at this time of morning, but thought better of it.

The slamming of a cabinet door, though, dragged him out of his refuge. He pulled on boxers and jeans and headed, shirtless, for the kitchen. Sam stood, his back to the doorway, his head down and shoulders visibly tight.

"Everything okay?"

"No." His partner grabbed a couple coffee mugs—one travel one with a broken handle and one ceramic one that had lost its handle altogether. The ceramic hit the counter hard enough that, as Sam poured, G watched for it to start leaking. Sam left him to add cream and sugar to his own and, sidestepping around G without even incidental contact, left the kitchen.

Distracted and irritated, more at himself for letting Sam convince him the night before that this would be a good idea than at Sam for being a jackass, G filled his mug to overflowing with creamer and ended up wiping down Sam's counters and part of the floor. By the time he finished cleaning up that mess and was somewhat ready—though not really—to deal with the bigger one, Sam had dressed and was on his way out the door.

"Can we talk about this?"

"We don't talk, right?" Sam shot back at him. "Stay put or so help me God I will hunt your ass down."

G watched him slam the door, half expecting neighbors to come out of the woodwork and start yelling because the sound seemed so deafening.

Or maybe that was just him.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** All - sorry for the delay. Got caught up in work and wedding and I really have no excuse. Sorry!!!

#

**Title:** Dangerous Liaisons

**Rating:** PG-13 for language and bits of violence

**Category:** Drama, AU

**Genre:** Slash

**Pairing:** G/Sam

**Summary:** A mistake from his past forces Callen to turn to his team for help. But will they want to?

**Spoilers:** None that come to mind. This is an AU and takes places prior to the backdoor pilot.

**Disclaimer:** NCIS, NCIS LA, and the characters therein do not belong to me, and no amount of wishing seems able to change that.

**Warning:** Discussion of depression and suicide but nothing graphic or detailed.

**A/N:** I've played fast and loose with a few things here, most notably geography, technology and the timelines of the two shows. Also, I probably murdered criminal procedure but good. But this, all 30,000+ words of it, is more about the characters than the plot so hopefully you can forgive. There is a _lot_ of talking and thinking in this story. Also, even though it's G/Sam, the MCs are really G and Nate.

**-12-**

It took one brief look at Sam for Nate to know that something had hit the fan. "Callen take off again?"

"If he knows what's good for him, he will." Across the table from him, Kensi raised both eyebrows and Nate shrugged before tapping Sam on the shoulder.

"A word?"

Sam worked his jaw and for a moment Nate thought he was going to refuse. But then he pushed back his chair, the feet of it screeching in the otherwise silent room, and he followed Nate out to his office.

Nate positioned himself in front of the closed door—as if he stood a snowball's chance in hell of stopping Sam from leaving if he really wanted to. "What happened?"

"Nothing you need to know."

"Which is why you didn't tell me off right there in front of Kensi." Nate nodded. "Sure, I get it." He mimicked Sam's body language and crossed his arms, and held Sam's stare. He might not be able to do the intimidation thing as well as Sam could—or Callen, for that matter—but he could hold a stare for a good, long time, long enough to get under almost anyone's skin.

It never failed.

"Got a phone call."

"From who?"

"Son of a bitch we're trying to find."

Nate's stomach twisted. A couple things had come to mind when Sam came storming in, his glare daring all of them to mess with him, but that hadn't been on the list. "He knows the data was faked and he's retaliating." Nate abandoned his post by the door and dropped into his chair instead. "Does Callen know that you know?"

"No."

"So you walked out, presumably in front of him, in the mood you're in right now without a reason?"

"More or less."

"And you expect him to stick around?" Callen had already run once, for whatever reason, and a sudden shift in attitude on Sam's part—from the man who'd driven hours out of the city to find him, to someone who walked out probably without a word—wasn't going to convince him to see this through to the end, even if he had no idea about the reason behind Sam's reaction. He'd fill in the blanks, maybe even come to the right conclusion, and probably be gone by lunch.

"Right now, I don't really care if he sticks around or not."

Nate shook his head. "That isn't true and you know it."

"He killed somebody, Nate. You gonna sit there and say, in your professional opinion, that's okay?"

"No. It isn't, and Callen knows that. He has his reasons for what he did and if you want to know what they are you'll have to talk to him. But Callen's a good man, Sam, and he's still your partner—"

"Was my partner. Nobody made him resign."

"So why do you think he did?" Nate didn't know, for sure, not having spoken to Callen since he'd left his weapon and badge behind, but he had his suspicions and they centered around his fear of exactly this—Sam's inability to understand his motivations. Of course, Sam couldn't understand his motivations without Callen actually sharing them with him, so it was a two-way street but…

"I don't know. And I don't care."

Well, that was a lie; no point in calling Sam out on it, though. "So you're just going to turn your back on three years of partnership? Callen is still the same person you've worked with, Sam. He just, like everyone else, has skeletons in his closet that you weren't prepared to see."

"My partner is a murderer."

"Your partner shot and killed a man who'd sold a dozen children, many of whom were orphans, into sexual slavery—a man who, by the way, was going to walk away without doing a day in prison." It was more than he probably should have said, but not more than Sam could get from reading the case file or having a conversation with Tony DiNozzo. "Before you jump to conclusions, you should really talk to Callen and at least get his side. Of course, you probably blew your only chance of doing that this morning. Though if you called him, maybe mustered an apology, he might actually hang around long enough for you to repair the damage."

Sam shook his head sharply. "Not happening. I see him now, I'm liable to haul his ass back here in handcuffs."

"And that's the beauty of a phone call. You don't actually have to see him."

"Not happening." Sam had the door open and one foot out in the hall before he turned back. "And don't get any ideas either."

He hadn't actually considered it until Sam made the backhanded suggestion. "If you're not going to, someone needs to. Before this situation gets any worse."

"Situation's already worse. I don't want anyone in contact with him until I figure out how to handle this."

"And you couldn't figure out why he didn't want to tell you what this guy had on him."

"Stay away from him, Nate. No calls, no nothing. That's an order."

"Then fire me." Nate picked up his phone as Sam walked out the door. He tried Callen twice, ending up at his voicemail both times, and finally stood and grabbed his cell. As long as he could get out of the building without Sam stopping him, he could deal with the consequences later.

#

Nate's cell rang just as he pulled up in front of Sam's apartment building. Sam. He held the phone away from his ear as he answered. "Where the fuck are you, Getz?"

He brought the phone in closer for just a second. "At your place."

Sam let out a string of curses, most of which Nate had heard before, though he suspected a few were in a couple different foreign languages. "I told you—"

"I know."

Sam swore at him a couple more times, though not with the same intensity, and threatened his job once before asking if Callen was there. Nate tried the knob, then hit the doorbell twice and got no response. "Doesn't look like it. I'm going to stay a little while in case he just went for a run." The man had been known to vanish from the office in the middle of the day to run out his frustrations, just as Sam had a tendency to disappear down to the gym. He'd give Callen forty-five minutes or so; he had no idea how far or how fast he was likely to run—if he hadn't just taken off, which was where Nate's money lay at the moment—and he didn't want to miss him. Sam hung up.

Kensi called fifteen minutes later, excitement bleeding into her voice even as she whispered to him over the phone. "Sam might kick my ass if he knows I'm calling you but Eric thinks we got a last name on the guy. We came up empty on the locker room but Eric finally caught a break, back-tracing the call Callen took at that payphone."

"What's the name?"

"Corlis. We don't know anything about him yet, but Eric's working on it."

"Thanks, Kens."

"No problem. I'll let you know when we come up with anything else." Nate imagined he could hear her grin over the phone line as they hung up.

Twenty minutes after that, Callen turned up Sam's street, moving at a slow jog. Sweat soaked his shirt and dripped down his face as he came to a stop at the foot of Sam's steps. He bent at the waist, hands on his thighs. "What are you doing here?"

Nate got to his feet. "Well, Sam came in looking a little beaten up and I figured I'd see if you were still alive to talk about it."

"Nothing to talk about." Callen let them both into the apartment. Nate had never been to Sam's place—while Callen had a standing invitation, the rest of them had never been extended the privilege. It was a typical bachelor pad—big TV and a couple shelves loaded with a variety of action flicks, as if Sam didn't get enough gunplay and explosions at work, and sparsely decorated with well-worn furniture. Nothing special, or overly inviting for that matter.

Callen waved him toward the sofa and disappeared into the back. Nate followed at least to the hallway, noting three doors off it—a closet, a bathroom, and a single bedroom. Callen closed the door to the bedroom and Nate retreated, trying to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was worse than he'd thought.

Callen was in and out of the shower in record time and Nate amused himself by trying to decipher Sam's TV remote. It wasn't really working for him. Callen came out in jeans and a t-shirt, his hair still wet, and sighed. "You don't need to babysit me."

"Looks to me like Sam did some damage."

"Survived worse." Callen shrugged. "But if he was hoping I'd be gone by the time he gets back, he's going to be disappointed."

"I think he probably was but not for the reasons you think." Nate nodded toward the hall behind Callen. "Did something happen between the two of you?"

"Not anything important."

"Callen—"

"Look. I quit. And as stupid a decision as that might have been—and believe me, I realize it was—it makes me not your problem anymore. So you can stop wasting your time. Go back to work. Help them find this asshole."

"He called Sam, Callen, and told him what he has on you. That's why he was in a shitty mood this morning." It wasn't the best description from a psychological sense but it was the most descriptive that came to mind. "It had nothing to do with… whatever else might have gone on between the two of you. He just doesn't know how to deal with it yet. So, yeah, he was probably hoping you'd be gone so he wouldn't have to figure out how to handle this."

Callen leaned against the wall, looking like he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. "He told him?"

Nate nodded. "Retaliation once he realized the data was falsified, more than likely."

Callen's response took him by surprise. "I should be pissed, shouldn't I?"

"Well, it's what you were hoping to avoid. But if you thought his reaction related to something else, it's not absurd that you'd feel some degree of relief." Nate wasn't really certain which Callen was likely to take worse: that his partner and best friend now apparently considered him a common murderer, or that he'd changed his mind after sleeping with him.

"Relief. Right." Callen pushed off the wall. "Thanks for the update, Nate, but as you can see I'm perfectly fine and have no intention of killing myself or taking off or whatever you were worried about. So you can go back and beg Sam's forgiveness for ignoring him when he no doubt told you not to have anything to do with me. And while you're at it tell him I'm not going anywhere."

It probably wasn't the best time to do this but Callen looked so weary that Nate couldn't hold back the one bit of information that he might find encouraging. "Eric caught a break on the trace. He finally isolated the phone that the call you took originated from. It belongs to someone named Corlis. They're running the name through our database now. I can make sure Kensi lets you know when we find something."

Callen blinked, twice, and then stepped forward, hand extended. "Thanks."

Nate frowned at the sudden change in his demeanor but took the offered hand and shook. Before he knew it, his back was flush against Callen's chest, one strong arm tight across his throat.

"Don't fight me."

He gasped, equal parts trying to draw oxygen and trying to ask what the hell was wrong with him. He struggled futilely against Callen's grip but that only served to increase the bruising pressure on his windpipe. Callen jerked him back and squeezed his bicep again, hard. "Damn it, Nate, I don't want to hurt you. Don't _fight_ me."

Spots dotted his vision. He vaguely felt Callen lowering him to the floor as black crept in from the corners of his eyes.


	13. Chapter 13

Okay, so I have no excuse for the delay, and I'm sorry, but I'll really try to be better

**-13-**

The first thing Nate realized when he opened his eyes, was that he could breathe again. The second was that he was still alive. The third was that his throat hurt.

A lot.

His fingers sent something skittering away from him. He rolled over and started to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced him back down to the floor. He groped for whatever it was he'd hit, which turned out to be a cell phone—his cell phone. Callen had made sure to leave it within reach.

He stayed where he was, staring at the ceiling while it wasn't threatening to move on him, and dialed Sam's cell.

"Hanna."

"I think Callen just tried to kill me."

"If Callen tried to kill you, you wouldn't be talking to me right now." Sam sighed heavily. "What happened, Nate?"

Nate rose, gingerly, gripping the couch for much-needed stability, and tried not to think about the fact that Sam was probably right. "He strangled me. Kind of."

"What happened before he tried to strangle you?"

Nate heard the sharp intake of breath in the background that had to be Kensi. "I told him the name of the guy who's been blackmailing him."

"Good going, Nate. Now get your ass back here as soon as you can drive, before you do any more damage." Sam hung up before Nate could protest.

#

"There's a call from an Agent DiNozzo in Washington looking for Mr. Callen on line two," Hetty announced about a minute and a half after Nate made it back into the office. He didn't miss the concerned glances both she and Kensi sent his way. He'd taken a brief look in his rear-view mirror but there hadn't been any really pronounced bruising. Apparently, that had changed.

Sam slapped, violently, at the speaker button on his desk phone. "This is Sam Hanna. Callen's my partner, Agent DiNozzo. What do you need him for?"

"Callen was in touch with my forensics technician, Abby Sciuto, about twenty minutes ago. He asked her to give him a half hour before she told me."

"Which she did." Sam scowled at the phone.

A female voice interrupted DiNozzo's response and Nate wisely hid a chuckle. "Excuse me. Twenty minutes is not the same as a half an hour. In fact, twenty minutes is a third not as long as—"

Sam practically growled at her. "What did Callen want, Miss Sciuto?"

"He asked me to look in an old case file of his and Tony's for known associates of a Michael Corlis who might potentially be in the LA area."

Nate swallowed, and promptly regretted it. Damn Callen, anyway.

"And what did you give him?"

"One guy came up—and you people probably would have gotten there soon anyway. I just knew which file to go to, which takes serious time off—"

"Today, Abby?" DiNozzo asked, before Sam could take the woman's head off again. Nate heard some unintelligible mumbling in the background before she replied. This seemed to be a usual thing for them.

"Guy named Dexter Morris. Apartment 2A, 4077 Glencoe Ave, Marina del Rey."

"Callen in some kind of trouble?"

"Well, he just assaulted an NCIS staff member so you tell me, DiNozzo," Sam snapped. "You hear from him again, I want to know immediately. I don't care if he asks you for thirty seconds, Miss Sciuto."

"Sir, yes, sir." It was Kensi's turn to try to hide a giggle.

"You should know that the case Corlis was involved in—that's become a recent issue for Callen. He had a problem with Corlis back then, but he could never prove it. We probably wouldn't have gotten anything on him anyway but the chance fizzled when the only guy who could have fingered him was killed."

"Got it, DiNozzo." Sam ended the call and twisted in his chair to glare at Nate. "Nice work."

"Sam, regardless of what you just found out, Callen is still Callen. He may not be your partner in name but he's still your partner. Whatever happens, try to remember that."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "I don't need you telling me how to handle Callen, Nate. Kensi, gear up."

"Sam—"

"Now."

"Right." She pushed back her chair and, in an effort to escape Sam, Nate followed her. He hung back a safe distance as she threw her locker door open with an excessive amount of force. She mumbled to herself, mocking Sam's attitude, and finished with, "What the fuck is his problem?"

"Is that a rhetorical question? Because, I think at the moment, I am."

Kensi jumped at the sound of his voice. "Jesus, Nate. Scare me half to death, why don't you?" She shoved her weapon into her holster and closed her locker. "Are you okay?"

"I'll live."

She closed the distance between them, head cocked to one side as she examined his bruised throat. "Why would he attack you?"

He raised his hand, self-conscious, to brush the abused skin. "My guess is for the same reason he called the tech in DC rather than Eric, and asked her to wait. He wanted to get to Corlis before you guys do."

"Do you know what Corlis is blackmailing him over?"

"I do."

"But you can't tell me?"

Nate shook his head. "But I strongly suspect you'll find out soon enough. Just try not to let it take you by surprise." Easier said than done, and Kensi's reply echoed his sentiment.

"Right. No surprise."

"Kensi!"

She rolled her eyes. "Coming!" She grinned at Nate. "We'll get Callen back here so you get a chance to kick his ass."

Given the ease with which Callen had taken him down, Nate figured it'd take more than Kensi to make that possible. "That's funny. You're a real riot."

"I know." She took off at a jog then before Sam could leave without her—which wasn't out of the question. Nate headed upstairs to join Eric and crossed his fingers that, despite how things had played out at Sam's apartment, his instincts about Callen weren't completely off-base.

If he was wrong, this was going to be a disaster.

#

Corlis had picked a cushy hangout. Security wasn't the best G had ever seen—and it certainly wasn't enough to keep him out—but it was decent. The key to getting in someplace you didn't belong was looking like you belonged there. Looking around like you were waiting for someone to ask you what the hell you were doing was a surefire way to get someone to ask you what the hell you were doing. So, despite the fact that neither elevators nor stairwell were readily visible when a kindly neighbor held the door for him since his hands were full—empty paper bags stuffed with empty plastic bags, filched from a grocery store—G bypassed the desk entirely as if he knew exactly where he was headed.

He made two wrong turns before he finally located the stairs, and abandoned his "burden" inside the closed door. Stairs, in places like this, tended to be bypassed by all but the fitness-conscious and the elevator-phobic.

G hesitated just outside the door to apartment 2A—a corner apartment facing the beach, and a good-sized one at that—and listened. He didn't hear anyone moving about inside, and the walls seemed fairly thin judging by the level of noise coming from the other doors he'd passed by, so it was a safe guess that the occupants were either absent or asleep. He hoped it was the latter. Assuming Abby had granted him his full half hour, which he doubted, his time was almost up.

Assuming she hadn't, Sam was probably on his way here.

He'd been tempted to call Nate, make sure he hadn't done any real damage, but the need not to give his old team a chance to find him early won out over the guilt. He kept trying to convince himself that Nate would be fine—G knew enough about self-defense and hand-to-hand that, while he was capable of killing a man with bare hands, he wasn't likely to do it accidentally—but it wasn't working.

Another thing he needed to apologize for.

He made short work of the lock—a place this expensive really ought to have better quality locks—and let himself inside, engaging the lock again after he closed the door. Sam would notice the scratch marks but by then, it wouldn't much matter.

He stood in a foyer of sorts; ceramic tile flooring just inside the door gave way to plush carpeting a few feet ahead of him. A door, probably a closet, stood to his immediate left and the short wall on his right ended at more ceramic tile, the kitchen. Beyond that was the living room, and a sleeping—he hoped—figure stretched the length of the black leather couch.

The man on the couch shifted and G dropped to a crouch and moved into the kitchen, where he stayed on his knees on the hard tile. He gave himself a minute to breathe and then drew his .45. He flipped the switch on the micro recorder in his pocket and moved out of the kitchen as the man started to snore. He'd be recording his own confession, but if he could get the dirt he needed on Corlis, it would be worth it.

One more thing he'd screwed up three years ago.

He'd rolled so he faced the television, giving G a clear look at his face. Definitely Corlis. There was no weapon in sight, which didn't mean he didn't have one—just that G couldn't disarm him while he was still asleep. He'd just have to be careful.

And hope Sam waited a little longer.

Weapon held loosely, but ready, G reached out and yanked the pillow out from under Corlis's head. The man jerked upright, eyes unfocused, and G grinned. "I never would have guessed you'd come all this way just to visit me."

"Son of a bitch, Callen." Corlis blinked rapidly, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Shouldn't you be more concerned with how I found you?" Corlis glared through narrowed eyes. "You were good. We were better. But I guess you figured that out by now."

"Then where's the rest of your team?" Corlis asked snidely.

"Oh, I expect they'll be arriving shortly. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether you'll be alive to meet them. They're not very happy with me right now, but I'd guess they're probably even less happy with you. And if not, they probably will be once they find out how you got your hands on that recording to begin with."

"And how was that?"

G shrugged. "Well, you tell me. I mean, you were obviously there. Did you… know what was gonna go down? Psychic, maybe? Or just lucky, that you happened to be in the same abandoned warehouse we followed Derring to?"

"He'd kidnapped my children and you people did everything you could to destroy that investigation from the outset."

"Is _that_ how you remember it? Because my memory's a little different. Granted, I've probably taken one too many shots to the head so I could be a little fuzzy. But I seem to remember you stonewalled us pretty good. And I also remember that our intel suggested Derring was meeting someone that day—probably someone involved with him. But he died and we never got the chance to find out." G waved the gun, intentionally a little careless. "That fit with your memory?"

"I followed him. And I saw you kill him."

G pressed his lips into a thin line, the only indicator he'd allow that the words still affected him. "Maybe. But that's your word against mine. And if I kill you, I don't have anything to worry about, do I?" He tightened his grip on the gun and leveled it, aiming for Corlis's head.

"You're a cold bastard."

It wasn't the first time he'd heard that, and it wouldn't be the last. "You have no idea."

"But you won't kill me."

"What makes you think that?"

Noise in the hallway, muffled voices that G recognized instantly, forestalled Corlis's reply—which was kind of a shame because he'd been interested in the man's reasons. G sidestepped, keeping his weapon trained on Corlis while positioning his own body to face the door. He was fairly sure Sam wouldn't shoot him, his assault on Nate that morning notwithstanding, but it was always a good idea to be prepared.

He hadn't had the opportunity to be a Boy Scout but it was a great motto just the same.

Someone—Sam or Kensi knocked twice, and G glanced at Corlis. "That'll be my team. You want to let them in, or should I?" Getting no answer, he shouted in the direction of the door. "It's locked, Sam!"

Sam made even shorter work of the lock than he had—the door flew inward under the force of a single, well-aimed kick. G's aim didn't waver even as Corlis twisted on the couch to stare at the newcomers. "He's insane! He's threatening to kill me!"

"Keep talking and I might let him." Kensi preceded Sam into the apartment, moving to the right with her weapon trained on Corlis while Sam aimed at G.

"Put it down, G."

"No. You can shoot me if you want, Sam—"

"Don't give me any ideas."

For a moment, G could almost pretend things were normal, that this was an ordinary op and his life as he knew it wasn't over. "Sorry." He wasn't sure what he was apologizing for, exactly, because one word certainly couldn't cover all the ways he'd screwed up.

G returned his attention to Corlis, whose eyes were once again fixed on him. Apparently his refusal to surrender had upped the ante in his target's eyes, though he tried again. "You won't kill me."

"Yeah, I think I asked before what made you so sure of that."

"G, drop it."

Maybe Sam's presence now could work to his advantage. G took two steps forward, right up to the edge of the coffee table. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sam's posture stiffen and reconsidered. Maybe Sam actually would shoot him.

Not like it mattered.

He spared a brief glance at his former partner. "No."

G cocked his head as he once again returned his attention to Corlis. "You know, you got off easy. Derring—the only person, as far as we knew, who could finger you was dead. You got away with at least your share of the money, without anybody knowing what kind of scumbag you really are. Your kids, the ones you were so broken up over after they went missing—one of them turned up at a shelter a year and a half ago. Melissa. I went to see her myself but she wouldn't talk about it. She wanted to forget it ever happened. But she couldn't. See, I kept tabs on her—tried to find her brother, too, but I couldn't. She threw herself off a bridge about six months ago. Bet you didn't know that."

Corlis worked his jaw. Kensi's aim wavered and G saw her blink rapidly. Damn. No one had filled her in yet.

"You were supposed to protect them. Get them out of the miserable social system and give them a home. But even half a share of what you could sell them for was more money than you could get from the state, wasn't it?" Corlis didn't answer. Sam's finger tightened on the trigger, gun still aimed in G's direction, but he wasn't worried.

"You were there; you know what Derring said to me. Guessing he said the same thing to you. Foster kids—no parents, no one to give a damn about them. I mean, you certainly didn't."

"What do you want?"

"The truth that we didn't get a chance to get from Derring."

Corlis laughed. "You shouldn't have killed him."

"Like you said. The investigation was blown. Not our fault, actually, but there was nothing we could to save it and I'd have died before I let Derring put another kid through the same hell that Melissa went through. I'd call that a moral dilemma." Kensi gasped, eyes going wide, as G tightened his finger on the trigger. "This is just revenge. And you did it to yourself."

"You're the one who broke in here—"

"And you're the one who tried to blackmail me. And until you called Sam, you had a chance of getting out of this okay. But now, my career's over and I'm going to prison either way so it doesn't really matter what I do now."

"That was murder two. This is premeditated. You could get the death penalty."

G shrugged, again. "Probably will. But all that means is I'll get a lethal injection instead of beaten to death by someone with a thing against cops." His stomach twisted at the thought. Kensi's face was ashen and Sam—Sam looked exactly the same as he always did. G allowed himself a moment to hope Sam was playing along, that his partner didn't really think him capable of premeditated murder, but he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. "But I'll make a deal with you."

"And what's that?" Corlis asked dryly.

"Admit that you were in it with Derring every step of the way and I'll let you live. Don't, and I'll just kill you."

"You wouldn't."

G stepped slowly around the table, bringing the barrel of his .45 closer to Corlis's head. "Do I look like I'm joking?" He stopped with the gun pressed to the man's temple. That was an uncomfortable position to be in even if you knew the person on the other end wasn't going to fire—hell, even if you knew the weapon wasn't loaded. He'd done that a time or two, in the course of an op.

Corlis leaned back and away from G, but the gun followed him. "You're insane."

"You said that already."

"G, drop it. This isn't gonna fix anything."

"It'll make me feel better."

"Shoot him!" Corlis shouted at them.

Kensi found her voice. "Right now, he's not doing anything I'm not tempted to do." G saw Sam shoot her a disbelieving look.

Apparently Corlis sensed he wasn't going to get any help unless G pulled the trigger—and by then, it would be too late. He wilted, shoulders sinking, but the smirk never left his face. "I bet you'd have gone for a lot of money when you were their age. We could have gotten five figures for you easily. High five figures."

G's stomach turned as he forced his leaden feet to move backwards and away from Corlis, true to his word. "Were you in it from the beginning?"

"Melissa was supposed to be first—they paid us good money for her—but Derring thought it would make me a prime suspect and we couldn't afford that."

G swallowed, hard, and tried without success to quell the nausea. He kept his finger on the trigger even as he raised his arms. He had his confession, and together with the untainted evidence it might be enough to put Corlis away even where they'd failed with Derring.

Sam and Kensi moved together into the living room. "Drop it, G." Sam kept his gun raised while he drew his handcuffs free from his belt.

He stepped back and, the gun in his left hand now, knelt and tossed it away from him.

"Up," Kensi ordered from the corner of the couch.

G didn't see what happened next, as he turned slightly to allow Sam to cuff his hands behind his back. "Nate okay?"

Two gunshots fired in rapid succession drowned out Sam's reply. A fraction of a second later pain seared through G's shoulder, the force of the bullet knocking him off balance and into the closed doors of the TV cabinet. He cracked his head hard enough to send the room spinning like crazy, and landed on his side, arms pinned beneath him, unable to do anything to stem the flow of blood soaking his shirt.

Kensi started talking, rapid fire, and he thought he made out Eric's name. Over her voice, he heard Sam muttering encouraging nonsense and reassuring him he'd be okay. Hands, probably Sam's rolled him over and he was vaguely aware of his wrists being released from the metal cuffs before the pain and the blow to his head combined to send him under.


	14. Chapter 14

**Dixiegirl - **Know what you mean. I like Deeks, but I not enough to read about him. Callen will remain my favorite, and probably stay the MC in anything I write. As for what will become of Callen... you'll just have to wait and see!

**-14-**

Sam was nowhere in sight when Nate walked into the ER. He spotted Kensi sitting off in a corner by herself, head down and shoulders slumped. Somehow, he doubted it was guilt over killing Corlis that was weighing on her.

"Kens?"

She raised her head, and made no effort to move aside the bangs that fell into her face. "Hey."

He took the lone seat next to her and stretched his legs out. "You okay?"

"Did Callen really kill that man? Derring? I mean—"

"You should talk to him about that when he recovers."

"Damn it, Nate." She struggled, almost physically, to keep her voice down. Even still, a couple people looked in her direction. "I was there. What they were talking about…" She shook her head, blinking rapidly as tears pooled in her eyes.

Nate leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees, and dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "Derring and Corlis were selling children, mostly orphans, into sexual slavery. I don't know the details but the case against Derring fell apart."

"So Callen killed him?"

Nate nodded slowly. "With his background—his childhood—he could have easily been one of those kids, once upon a time. He identified with them, maybe too much to do his job objectively. And when they couldn't get a conviction, he couldn't see the way to letting him walk free and do it all over again."

Privately, he wasn't certain that Callen hadn't experienced at least some of what Derring and Corlis's victims had, but it wasn't a possibility he had any intention of voicing to Kensi—or even Callen himself.

She turned away from him, chin resting in her left hand. "Sam seems furious. But… I don't know if I am. I…" She swallowed, hard, and curled her right hand into a fist. "I only know part of it and I'm still trying to piece that together but when I think about what those kids must have gone through, when I try to put myself in Callen's position? I don't know if I'd have done anything differently."

"I think it's one of those things you can't know unless you're there. Fortunately, you, and Sam, and I haven't been. Callen was and he's been living with that decision a long time."

She finally turned to look at him. "Did you hear all of it? What Callen said, about that girl? Melissa?"

"I did."

"Did he tell you that?"

Nate shook his head. "No."

"I came in late one night—I forgot something… or I don't know. I don't remember why. I guess it was maybe a year ago. Callen was searching the database for someone, and I asked him what was up. He closed out, kind of blew me off—you know, the way he does." Nate knew. He was, in fact, very familiar with Callen's tendency to blow off anyone who asked him even the most remotely personal question. "I figured he was looking for himself, you know? But maybe it was her. Or her brother."

"Maybe."

Kensi gave a small, bitter laugh. "You know, you hear horror stories about foster families. I've heard them—everybody has, I guess. Hell, I've seen it. But I let it roll off, you know? Like, I know it happens. Kidnappings happen. Murders happen. All the time. But it never occurred to me that maybe the stories are more true than not. I mean, Callen—he seems okay, and he grew up that way." She cocked her head to the side, eyes down. "You don't think he…"

"I don't know much of anything about Callen's upbringing. I can guess he was moved around a lot and I can assume that he probably found himself in some bad situations." Nate shrugged. "I don't know for certain but statistics suggest it. Child abuse, not just in foster homes but in everyday American families, does happen, and the chances that you know someone who suffered it are higher than you'd probably guess. But chances are that there are more good families and parents than bad. And people like Corlis aren't the rule. It's just that because of our jobs, it seems that way sometimes."

She nodded, more to herself than him, and didn't reply right away. By the time she spoke again, Sam was heading toward them. "What's gonna happen to him now?"

"I have no idea."

Sam reached them in time to hear her question and Nate's reply. "Me either."

"How's Callen?"

Sam shrugged, eyes dark with worry for his partner. "He's in surgery right now, to remove the bullet. They say it didn't hit anything vital, maybe nicked the bone is all." His lips quirked upward into a half-smile. "Good news is because he's in custody he can't sign himself out AMA." It was an ongoing problem with him—probably, Nate thought, having more to do with Callen's need not to be tied down than any hatred of hospitals. Callen hadn't once, in all the time he'd known him, stayed in a hospital long enough to be discharged through normal channels.

Kensi's smile didn't reach her eyes. "He's not gonna like that."

Sam's smile disappeared. "Me either."

#

Nate was in Callen's room, a private room with Sam and Kensi continually switching off guard duty outside, when Callen regained consciousness after surgery to remove the bullet. His uninjured left arm was cuffed to the bed, despite Kensi's protests that Callen wasn't exactly a flight risk. She'd tried to convince Nate to take her side but he'd demurred; Sam was trying to keep things as by-the-book as possible, even though it was pretty much a lost cause, and Callen probably would have insisted anyway. He hadn't protested at being cuffed the first time around.

He, Eric and Hetty had listened to the whole thing from the office. Callen had seemed himself, for the most part, though when he'd started talking about dying in prison both Eric and Hetty had looked at him like they expected him to try to climb through the wireless transmitters and talk Callen down.

Was he really that bad?

The clink of metal against metal pulled Nate out of his head. Callen looked up at him, head still on the pillow, face gray and drawn. "What happened?"

"Corlis tried to kill you after you surrendered. Kensi shot him, but not fast enough. Hit you in the shoulder, and you hit your head when you fell." Nate dragged the chair from its spot against the wall and sat down.

Callen turned slightly, shutting his eyes tightly and panting through a wave of either dizziness or pain—or both. "He still alive?" he managed to ask.

"No. There'll be a brief investigation, but the fact that you were wounded will help prove out that her actions were necessary." Nate leaned forward. "You okay?"

"I've been shot. And to make matters worse, I'm in a hospital." Nate made a mental note of the fact that he hadn't mentioned being cuffed to the bed. "I'm just great."

"Corlis said a few things—"

"I assume you're referring to his conclusions about how much he could have sold me for? I'm fine, Nate." He closed his eyes tightly for a second or two. "Are you okay?"

"A little sore." No point in lying.

Callen opened his eyes again, but focused them on the ceiling instead of looking at Nate. "I'm sorry. It's just… as soon as you mentioned Corlis, I had to take the chance. I blew it last time. I couldn't… it wasn't about the blackmail."

"I know." Nate looked down at the floor for a moment, weighing his words carefully. It didn't take a psych degree to see the guilt written all over Callen's face, and he certainly didn't need to heap any more on him. "I'm man enough to admit you scared the hell out of me for a minute there."

"I'm sorry. It was the only thing… I could think of." His eyes fluttered closed but he forced them back open. "I just needed the time."

"I get it. And that doesn't matter right now." They might or might not talk about it later, depending on how things played out from here.

"Right." Callen waved his right hand and the cuff jingled against the bed rail. "More important things." He closed his eyes and let his head sink into the pillow. "How's Kensi? She… heard a few things she maybe wasn't prepared for."

"She'll be okay." Nate stood, moving the chair as little as possible. "Get some rest, Callen. I'll let your doctor know you woke up."

Callen was asleep again before he made it out the door.

. 


	15. Chapter 15

**something** - Thanks! You'll see soon what'll become of Callen...

**ddonga - **Thank you! I really liked Nate's character, and thought he had great potential, particularly as a foil for Callen. I love writing him, and am always glad to see that someone likes reading him.

**McQuaids** - Here you are!

**Kaelynn-Perth** - Haha, thanks for reading!

**A/N:** Fair warning: I will **try** to update at least one more time before I leave on my honeymoon, but then you guys will have to go at least two weeks without an update. Don't think I've abandoned you - I will just be getting myself a tan in the Caribbean!

**-15-**

By day three of almost any hospital stay, G would have managed an escape somehow, with or without a physician's blessing. Sam had told him once, relatively early on in their partnership, that AMA ought to at least be his middle name. Kensi had been mildly horrified by the joke, but G thought even then that it defined their partnership perfectly.

This go-round, though, he was on day four and signing himself out wasn't an option. He was a federal prisoner, handcuffed to the railing of his hospital bed, with an armed guard—albeit a friend of his—outside at all times. Hell, he needed Sam or Kensi, or Nate on one occasion, to uncuff him just to let him use the restroom once they'd removed the catheter.

It was humiliating, but he wasn't exactly in a position to complain.

Sam poked his head in now and then, usually when he thought G was asleep, but he never stayed long enough to talk. Not that they talked—it just wasn't the way things worked between them, even now.

And G didn't want to talk, not exactly. Not about the turn their relationship had taken, or his lousy timing in finally letting Sam know how he felt. He just needed for Sam to understand why he'd killed Derring. Whatever happened after, however Sam decided he felt about it, G could deal with—as long as Sam understood his reasons.

Motive. Murderers didn't have reason; they had motive.

The worst part of being in federal custody and having a wounded shoulder, other than needing an escort to use the bathroom, was the restricted range of motion. The nurse, a cute brunette who didn't even look old enough to have her degree, had left the remote for the bed within reach of his cuffed left hand. His right was useless.

Nate had been by at least once a day, playing shrink under the guise of keeping him company. It was nice to have someone there, even if the man watched him like a hawk. As if he could do anything to himself, chained to a bed.

He really should have thought about the fact that Sam and Kensi being in the apartment would have meant Nate could hear everything he said.

Not that it wasn't all true. And not that being realistic about his chances of surviving in prison meant he was suicidal. But after nearly three years working with Nate, the man still didn't seem convinced he was mentally stable, and G couldn't figure out why. Now and then he wondered if Nate saw something he couldn't. But Sam didn't seem to see it either… at least, not before, he hadn't.

Nate poked his head in around nine hundred or so, stopping off on his way into the office. "How you doing?"

"What makes you so convinced I'm suicidal?"

Nate blinked twice before coming in and closing the door behind him. "What brought that on?"

"Maybe the fact that you always look at me like you expect me to snap? And, you know, being in here with no one but you to talk to for the last four days has left me an awful lot of time to think."

Nate hovered by the foot of his bed for a moment before finally pulling up his usual chair. "I don't necessarily think you're suicidal, Callen. I think—I know—you have some self-destructive tendencies. And while in most people, maybe those wouldn't be so problematic, in a profession where you carry a gun and people try to kill you on a regular basis—it becomes more of an issue." He sat down, slowly, and leaned back in the chair. The angle made it hard for G to see the mostly faded bruises on his throat. "I think you have some problems you've never dealt with."

"Everybody has baggage." Some more than others, and he probably had more than his share, but one look at his partner was enough to know that Sam had a few suitcases full himself. G couldn't figure out what made him any different in Nate's eyes.

"And most people don't talk about it. That's true." Nate shrugged out of his jacket. "But Callen, and don't take offense to this, your baggage contributed to your decision to kill a man. You don't think that's cause for concern?"

"That's not—"

Nate interrupted him. "I don't believe for a second that you would have killed Derring if you didn't share a common background with his victims."

"So my rotten childhood made me a murderer?" G wanted to cross his arms, but the sling and the cuffs made that impossible. It was hard to convey irritation with body language while lying in a bed with two essentially useless limbs.

"I'm not saying that. I just think you have some problems that bear talking about, and it worries me that you're determined not to talk to anyone, including Sam."

"It's not uncommon for people not to talk about their problems. Said so yourself."

"I know." Nate leaned back in his chair—and it was his chair. No one else had stayed long enough to sit down. Not Kensi, and certainly not Sam. Even Hetty had stayed only a couple of minutes. "You're difficult, Callen. I don't know how to help you, and every time I try, I just feel like I'm banging my head against a wall."

"Sam—"

"Sam talks. Not often, but he does. I almost fell out of my chair when you came in to talk to me on Monday. And I was glad at the same time."

"Even though it was only to tell you I'd killed someone?"

"Even though it was to tell me you'd killed someone. You came to me for help. For the first time in three years, you let me do my job, and you let me do it without feeling like I was pulling teeth. You needed help, even it was only advice, and you recognized that. And, more importantly, you asked for it."

"And yet, you're still looking at me like you think I'm going to throw myself in front of a bus."

"You asked for help once, Callen. But I don't think you would have done it if your back wasn't against a wall. And it doesn't convince me you'll ask a second time."

G couldn't fault him for that, mostly because Nate's assessment was pretty on the money. Walking into Nate's office had been harder even than filling his team in on what was happening. It probably shouldn't have been that way but maybe he really was just that screwed up.

"You scared me when you resigned, Callen." Nate looked down at his hands. "When I was getting my doctorate, I did some work with trauma survivors, people with PTSD, suicide prevention."

"Lot of heavy stuff."

Nate nodded slowly. "Yeah. A lot of heavy stuff. And I lost patients." Nate raised his eyes, lips set in a thin line. "You remind me of one of them. He was a Marine—MSOB. Suffered from depression, PTSD; didn't want to go through the military for therapy. There were a lot of things he wouldn't talk to me about, even after over a year seeing him every week. He went AWOL two days before he killed himself."

It was G's turn to look down. First thing on his list of apologies due to Nate and he hadn't made it there yet. "I'm sorry about that. I honestly didn't realize you'd take it that way. I wasn't thinking about suicide, Nate. You don't have to believe me, but—"

"I do believe you. For one, you have no reason to lie to me. For two, you went someplace you knew Sam would eventually find you—whether that was your intention or not. And I don't believe that if you were thinking about taking your own life, that you'd do it somewhere Sam would be likely to find you."

"Probably not. Not that I've thought about it." Not that Nate needed to know the idea had ever crossed his mind.

It had—not for a long time, but now and then in the past, even as a kid, and probably a little more than was healthy. As far as G knew, though, there was no way that information could have made it into his file, which meant Nate couldn't know, and he preferred it that way.

"Thinking about it isn't the big problem, Callen—not that it's not a problem at all, but it's not what worries me the most. Most people consider it now and then, especially in your line of work. _I've_ thought about it once or twice. I worry about it becoming more than just fleeting thoughts, or those thoughts going from the abstract to more concrete. It's when you put a gun to your head to see how it feels, or you think about how or where or when. Or start writing notes—particularly if they mention there being no other way out."

The last he added just as G forced himself to meet Nate's eyes, and it had the effect of pushing him to look away again. That _really_ hadn't been his intention, and Nate wasn't the only one he needed to apologize to for it. He had a lot of making up to do, and he just wasn't sure he'd get the chance to do it all. "And I believe that anyone else in our office, at that point, would talk to me—or to someone else who might be able to help them. I just don't think you would."

"I'm not—"

"Maybe so. But I can't tell the difference. And maybe part of this is selfishness but the way I felt when you resigned and we couldn't track you down—the way I felt when I got the phone call that my patient had killed himself—I don't like that feeling, Callen. And I'd just as soon not feel that way again."

"I'm not worth wasting your time over. Especially not now." He realized even before Nate's eyes narrowed that that had probably been the wrong thing to say.

"And you wonder why I worry about you? See, that's the kind of thing that Sam and Kensi don't say."

"But it's true, Nate. What I said to Corlis? That wasn't depression. It wasn't me wanting to die. It's just the truth. I'd like to think I can handle myself but I try to be a realist. I knew when I told everyone Corlis had contacted me, how this would end. Guess I'm used to the idea by now."

"Pretty pessimistic attitude."

"Just realistic. I'm a cop… a fed, to make matters worse. Either way, I go to prison and all it takes is one person to realize that and I'm in the kind of trouble you can't bail me out of."

Nate straightened and rolled his shoulders. "I'll let that go for now, mostly because, honestly, I'm not sure how to counter your argument. You're probably right and it's pointless pretending otherwise. But I'll make you a deal."

"What deal?"

"I'd like to think that by now you've realized talking to me isn't the worst thing in the world?"

G raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. But don't quote me on that."

Nate smiled. "Fair enough. So here's the deal. You promise me that if you even start to think you're in trouble, you'll talk to me. Ask for help."

He shook his head slowly. "I'm chained to a hospital bed and I'm going from here to a holding cell. Probably not even gonna get out on bail because, and maybe I'm tooting my own horn here but I'm good enough at my job to pose a significant flight risk. Unless you're worrying about me hanging myself in my cell…" He trailed off and shook his head. "I don't see the point."

"I do. So do we have a deal?"

"Like I said, I think it's pointless but… if it means you stop giving me those looks, sure."

Nate's smile broadened as he pushed the chair back and stood. "Good." His phone rang then and G listened closely, trying to hear both ends but all he could catch was a couple yeses from Nate and promise to be in shortly before he hung up. "Gotta go. Case."

"Does that mean I'm losing my guard?"

"No such luck. Kensi's staying. But you should be released soon, maybe tomorrow."

"See you then."

"Hang in there." Nate clapped him on his good shoulder and left. G heard him exchange words with Sam outside before they left.

#

The 'case' that called Nate away from Callen's hospital room wasn't a new case at all. It was, rather, the Director demanding an explanation for her lead OSP team being out of commission for a week. They couldn't very well assign someone outside the immediate team to monitor Callen without letting the rest of the office know he'd been arrested and, no matter the fact that he didn't pose a flight risk as far as anyone at NCIS was concerned, protocol required he be monitored by someone from the agency until he could leave the hospital.

Not much about this case had followed protocol from the beginning, but Sam was determined it would from here on out.

They'd driven to the hospital separately—Sam had been there all night—so Nate didn't have a chance to talk to Sam as they headed back to the office, but he made a point of catching him before they went in to talk to the Director. There still might be a way to salvage Callen's career, but it would hinge on how Sam explained this to Shepard.

He caught up to Sam five minutes before the scheduled conference with Shepard, despite Sam's best efforts to dodge him. "A word?"

"This isn't any of your business, Nate."

Nate leaned against his open office door and considered how far he should push this. It involved him inasmuch as they, as the only two who knew anything close to the whole story—other than DiNozzo—now had to try to explain it all to Shepard in a way designed to save all their jobs, if that was even possible. But Callen was no longer an agent, which meant the state of their partnership, or any other relationship between the two of them, wasn't technically his concern.

But Callen deserved a break.

He dropped his voice to reply. "I know what happened between the two of you the night before Corlis called you."

Sam's eyes narrowed, but not quickly enough to mask the flicker of surprise that passed over his face at Nate's words. "And that's really none of your business."

Nate stepped back and into his office, allowing Sam to enter—though he came in just far enough to leave room for the door to close. "You want to talk out here or inside?"

Sam glared at him, his patented angry expression. "This doesn't involve you, Nate. Whatever happened between G and me, and I don't know how you know because I know damn well he didn't tell you, is between him and me. It's got nothing to do with the job, or his case, or anything else."

"Maybe not. So consider this me talking to you as a friend—of Callen's and of yours. You don't understand why he did what he did and that's fine. But have you even tried to talk to him about it? Have you asked him why? You worked with him for almost three years, Sam, and you're the only person he trusts. I had to bargain with him to get him to agree to tell me if he starts thinking about suicide. If you asked him, he'd tell you. That may not sound like much to you but trust me. For someone like Callen, that's a big deal. And what you're doing now is proving to him that trusting you—or anyone else—was a mistake. Just like it's been every time in the past."

"He murdered someone."

"Yeah. He did. But put yourself in his position. You're standing in front of someone who you know is never legally going to pay for his crimes—crimes against children, any one of whom could have been, in another time and place, you. Derring sold these kids off to be raped, beaten—abuse that would eventually drive at least one, and probably more, to suicide. Kids you couldn't help, kids who suffered while you were building a case that fell apart in front of you—kids who went missing while you were building a case that fell apart right before your eyes."

Nate couldn't tell if his words were having any effect. Sam was an undercover agent, and too good an actor for Nate to easily read him at the best of times, and this wasn't close to the best of times. "What do you want from me?"

"Talk to Callen. Give him a chance. And try to remember the fact that everyone makes mistakes. He's willing to face the consequences of his."

"He killed someone. Shot him in cold blood. That's not my partner."

Nate ignored the last remark; as far as he was concerned, Callen was still the same person they'd believed him to be before last week had started, but he didn't have time to try to convince Sam of that—not with the Director waiting to rip them apart.

Sam turned to go, and Nate caught his arm, steeling himself for the backlash. "Maybe. But think about this. What's the worse crime? Killing Derring or letting him walk, and live to torment another dozen kids into miserable lives, most of which will probably end in suicide? I'm not condoning murder but I can't condemn Callen for killing a guilty man—not knowing he very well may have saved any number of kids from suffering at Derring's hands."

Sam shook his hand off and left without another word, his expression still the same steely-eyed glare it'd been when he walked in the door.


	16. Chapter 16

**Sweetpea -** I think the whole thing threw Sam for a loop - but he's still G's partner, and that hasn't changed. He's just still finding his footing. Hope you like this chapter.

**A/N: **Only one chapter after this, and I think it'll have to wait until after I get back at the end of June, unless I can steal a bit of time on Friday.

**-16-**

Callen's arm was still in a sling when the doctor finally released him, which made it impossible for Sam to handcuff him again. Sam had responded with a glare to Callen's offer to suffer through the pain for the sake of appearances, and Kensi had warned Callen that his wound didn't preclude her from kicking his ass if he made another stupid suggestion.

Clearly, she'd had less trouble coming to terms with the reality of his actions than Sam had. Even Eric and Hetty had taken the news in stride; they were more concerned for Callen's fate than over the fact that he'd murdered a man. Nate really wasn't sure _what_ to make of that.

Sam and Kensi escorted him into the office. A few agents outside the team nodded hello or offered get-well wishes to Callen as he came in; to anyone who didn't know the whole story, it looked as if they'd simply picked him up upon release from the hospital and brought him in for debriefing because he couldn't drive himself. Most agents would spend a little time recuperating at home after taking a bullet to the shoulder but this wasn't anything out of the ordinary where Callen was concerned.

At Sam's insistence—though not in Callen's range of hearing—he was left in a closed interrogation room, with great pains taken to ensure no one realized he was being treated as a prisoner. No one outside the team even knew he'd resigned, and Kensi maintained custody of his badge and weapon despite Sam's threats of bodily harm.

Even with his transparent attempts to protect his partner, it was impossible for any of them to miss the fact that Sam still wasn't speaking to Callen. Their brief conversation before the teleconference with Director Shepard and Agent DiNozzo had affected Sam, but not to the degree he was willing to let Callen know it.

He caught Sam the first chance he got—which, unfortunately, wasn't until Callen had spent at least an hour alone in interrogation. "Got a second?"

"Since I'm still working on making sure Shepard doesn't fire all our asses, yeah, I got time." Sam rolled his eyes. "Nate, I'm busy." He tried to keep walking but Nate caught his arm.

"I know. But unfortunately, your partner, fresh out of the hospital after being shot, is sitting by himself in an interrogation room. Your ignoring him isn't—"

"Haven't we been over all the ways this isn't your business?"

"Would it kill you to—"

"It might." Sam pulled free, wrenching Nate's wrist in the process. "Director's on in half an hour. Tell Kensi." He walked away, leaving Nate reassessing—not for the first time—which half of the Sam/Callen partnership was really more difficult to deal with.

#

After twenty minutes sitting on the wrong side of the table in interrogation, G gave up waiting and started pacing. He was still exhausted and his body protested the constant motion despite his best efforts to keep his right arm immobile, but he couldn't handle staying still any longer. He paused now and then to glance at the camera, wondering if it was on, and then resumed his pacing.

After about forty-five minutes, Kensi came down with a cup of coffee and a bagel. "You okay?"

"Been better. For all the traffic in here, I might as well still be in the hospital. At least there I had the nurses for company."

She winced. "I'm sorry. We're just… in the middle of something." From her pocket she produced an orange pill bottle. "Take two. Doctor's orders."

"Tell Nate he can come down here and force pills down my throat himself."

"I would but he shoved them at me and more or less ran in the other direction." She grinned and he couldn't help but return the smile—though it didn't last long. When he didn't take the pills himself, she shook two into her palm and pressed them into his hand. "Take them."

"Trying to drug me into cooperation?" He obliged her, washing them down with coffee, then stuck his tongue out to show her he'd swallowed them. "Happy?"

Kensi bit her lip as she nodded, the smile fading from her eyes. "I'm sorry about this."

"I know."

"I'll be back in half an hour or so." She paused, one foot through the open door, and turned back. "Callen?"

"Yeah?"

"For what it's worth, and I don't know how much that is… I don't blame you for what you did. I would—I can't say for sure but I'm not certain that I could have let him walk away either."

"Thanks."

But Kensi didn't come back. Another forty-five minutes passed and then Sam appeared. He held the door open and motioned G up. "How you feeling?"

"Just great thanks to whatever pills Nate pushed on me."

"Pain meds, G. Though I can see why they'd knock you for a loop since you act like you're allergic to 'em most of the time." Sam met his eyes for an instant before he looked away. "Director wants to talk to us."

G swallowed, hard, but slipped past Sam out the door. For a second he thought he felt his old partner's hand on his good shoulder, but quickly put the thought out of his head. He led the way, Sam a step behind him, up to the Ops room, where Nate, Kensi and Hetty were already assembled behind Eric. "Director's on in sixty seconds."

Tony DiNozzo stood to her left, the darkness of MTAC behind them, when Director Shepard appeared on the screen. "I'm glad to see your team reassembled, Agent Callen." G opened his mouth to protest—this was Sam's team, at least until Macy returned—but an elbow to the side snapped his jaw shut. "How's your shoulder?"

"Recovering."

"And how about the drugs you're on?"

He forced a smile, wondering if the effects were really that obvious, and shifted his weight from his left foot to his right. The small talk only served to increase his nerves; he just wanted the inevitable to be over and done with. "Ask me again in fifteen minutes or so."

"Understandable." Shepard stepped back. "Agents DiNozzo and Hanna have briefed me on a rather disturbing set of events that unfolded over the past week. Am I to understand, Callen, that you were contacted by someone demanding top secret information in exchange for their silence about an alleged crime?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And none of you felt it necessary to inform my office that you were dealing with a blackmailer who might potentially access a significant amount of highly sensitive information?"

Sam cleared his throat. "Given the circumstances, ma'am, we felt it better to deal with the problem quietly."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "And by circumstances, I believe you mean the allegations that this agency was involved in covering up a murder committed by one of our own agents?"

That time G was certain he felt a hand on his shoulder. Nate, not Sam. Sam, as she spoke, had moved closer to him—closing ranks, he allowed himself to think for a second—but still managed to keep his distance. "Yes, ma'am."

"And whose decision was that?"

Sam spoke before G managed to process the question. Damn pain pills. There was a reason he hated taking them—and he knew for a fact Sam was almost as averse to the idea as he was. "Mine, ma'am."

G opened his mouth to argue but shut it again just as quickly. He hadn't ever asked them to keep it quiet, had he? He didn't really remember. "Agent Callen informed us he was being blackmailed and believed whoever was behind it might be targeting individuals other than himself. Given that he'd been forthcoming with the information and that we had no idea who else might be involved, I thought it best to pursue it on our end until it became necessary to involve you."

"And it became necessary only after Agent Callen was shot and the blackmailer killed?"

"With the help of DiNozzo's team, we determined Michael Corlis was staying with a friend, Dexter Morris, here in LA. After he was killed, we detained Morris until he gave up the location where Corlis had stashed his supposed evidence, a safe-deposit box. The box contained only a recording of a conversation between Agents DiNozzo and Callen following Alex Derring's death. We believe it's inconclusive as evidence but we've forwarded that recording to your forensics lab in DC for analysis."

"Inconclusive?" G asked, before he could stop himself.

DiNozzo spoke for the first time. "I don't know what exactly he played for you but my guess is you heard everything he had. There was nothing… incriminating, other than me telling you to shut up."

Behind G, Nate cleared his throat. "It was a bluff. The only evidence he could have used against you would have been his own eyewitness account—which would have been highly suspect given that he was blackmailing you. A newspaper could print his allegations but it's unlikely any DA would have made an attempt to prosecute you based on his testimony, especially once it became clear that Corlis was involved in Derring's human trafficking ring."

Shepard folded her arms across her chest. DiNozzo took a step back, his eyes on the Director, expression wary. "And with Corlis now dead and therefore unable to testify, and without any confession, Agent Callen, or eyewitness account forthcoming from Agent DiNozzo, there is no case against you. It's convenient, I must say."

Sam stepped in front of G. "Director, if you're accusing Agent Blye of shooting Corlis to orchestrate a cover-up, you're mistaken. Agent Callen surrendered his weapon and was in handcuffs at the time he was shot. Your forensics technician, Abby Sciuto, should be able to confirm that based on her analysis of the medical records forwarded from the hospital."

DiNozzo nodded. "She has."

Out of the corner of his eye, G saw Kensi take a couple steps forward. "I had no choice, Director. Agent Callen was unarmed and under arrest. I was in the process of apprehending Corlis myself when he produced a weapon. I stand by my actions."

"Duly noted." Shepard nodded once, dismissively, and returned her attention to Sam and G, who sidestepped his way out from behind his partner. "That's at least twice now that I've heard reference to Agent Callen being placed under arrest and, as I understand it, he's been treated as a federal prisoner during his hospitalization. On what grounds?"

"On the basis of Corlis's unsubstantiated accusations, ma'am. I wanted to avoid any appearance that we'd mishandled the case."

Shepard laughed, mirthlessly. "I think it's far too late for that. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—this investigation is beyond salvageable. Unless you have any intention of addressing Corlis's allegations, Agent DiNozzo?" Shepard turned, one eyebrow raised, in her agent's direction.

"No, ma'am."

"You, Agent Callen?"

G glanced to either side but both Kensi and Sam stared straight ahead. "No, ma'am." He hesitated only a moment before adding, "Except that, in the apartment when we interacted with Corlis, I was wired. An electronic transmitter that should have been feeding back to one of our servers. Eric—"

"Why don't you just confess?" Sam growled into his ear, his voice too low for the microphone feeding to DC to pick up.

Eric coughed. "Uh, yeah, we know about that. Sam recovered the transmitter at the scene after you passed out. Unfortunately, because we were running our own op, and I wasn't expecting a transmission from you, there's nothing on the server. The feed didn't make it through because I wasn't set up to receive it."

That was a load of BS and G knew it—and Eric, as well as the rest of them, knew he knew it. "Weren't Kensi and Sam wired?" Someone—had to be Nate—kicked the back of G's left leg hard enough to make his knee buckle. Sam caught him before he went down, and kept his hand on his arm—grip a little tighter than was strictly necessary. Another warning to shut his mouth.

G's eyes followed Shepard and DiNozzo as they both turned, once again, in Eric's direction. He actually looked chagrined this time. "Uh, yeah, that was my bad. When I was trying to figure out where your transmitter was feeding to—which, like I said, turned out to be nowhere—I accidentally overwrote the feed we had picked up."

DiNozzo looked away, an indecipherable expression on his face. Shepard coughed. "Overwrote it with what?"

Eric looked down at the panel in front of him and struck a few keys. "Uh, this." Sam's voice, cursing G's tendency to go off half-cocked and without letting the rest of them in on his plans—and then having the balls to get himself shot—filled the room. G pulled his attention away from Eric, who had enough sets of eyes on him, to look at Sam, who still stared straight ahead at the Director. It sounded authentic, like something Sam would say—and probably had said on multiple occasions. G almost believed it. In fact, he probably would have except for one thing.

In the nearly three years they'd worked together, Eric had never made a mistake like this.

Shepard didn't buy it either, and neither did DiNozzo, but it was in DiNozzo's best interests to keep his mouth shut. Even Shepard seemed at a loss. "Agent Macy, it seems that you have some issues to resolve with your team once you return to duty."

G's stomach dropped as Macy stepped into view, lips set in a thin line. Next to him, Sam released his arm, his posture going rigid, and to his right, Kensi's lips parted in ill-concealed surprise. "It does appear that way, ma'am. Callen, Sam—we'll discuss this at greater length when I return to LA."

G only nodded, and he considered himself lucky he could manage even that. Sam did nothing.

Shepard sighed, again glancing toward DiNozzo, who made a very visible point of looking anywhere and everywhere but at her, and then returned her attention to G. "Given the highly unusual situation in which we find ourselves, and the distinct lack of evidence available, I have no choice but to consider you cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of Alex Derring. Once you're physically able to return to duty, you may—under two conditions."

G stared at her. This time, it wasn't just the drugs inhibiting his ability to process information being laid out right in front of him. Sam nudged his arm and he shook himself. "Yes?"

"I expect your full cooperation with Nate Getz. I want a complete psychiatric evaluation on my desk before I'll allow you to be cleared for field work."

He cringed inwardly at the thought of spending more time in Nate's office. Although, with their new agreement—and damn Nate anyway; he had to have known this was coming—it might be slightly more tolerable. "And the second?"

"You return to duty with the understanding that from this point forward, any circumstances resulting in the death of a suspect while in your custody will be greeted with a much higher degree of scrutiny than your colleagues would experience. Do I make myself clear?"

G swallowed. It shouldn't have been this difficult to find his voice. He wasn't going to prison. Corlis hadn't succeeded in ruining his life.

But he'd just dragged his entire team, plus one Director, into the middle of a cover-up. Again.

"Yes, ma'am."

"My highest priority is preserving the integrity of this agency. I don't think I have to tell you that if this happens again, it will not be your colleagues at NCIS conducting the investigation. I likewise do not need to tell you that any number of agents within the FBI would be only too happy to sink their teeth into allegations against an NCIS agent—and they won't be the least bit picky about who it is. DiNozzo can fill you in if you have any questions on that." The agent in question visibly cringed at her words right before the screen went to a test pattern.

As the agents and staff around G began to gravitate toward the door, he focused his attention on one in particular. "Eric."

Their computer tech shook his head. "Honest mistake, Callen; won't happen again. I spent half the morning yesterday on the phone with Abby fixing the problem."

"And he loved every second of it." Kensi grinned and G abandoned Eric to pursue the more likely culprits—Eric had, no doubt, only been following orders. Sam had already taken off, and he caught up to Nate and Kensi on the stairs.

"Nate—"

"Doctor/patient privilege, Callen. My lips are sealed. Nothing I could've done."

Kensi disappeared before he could question her, though she returned almost as quickly, producing something from behind her back.

His badge and gun.

"Sam has your personal firearm. It never made it into evidence. And I stole your resignation before it could be processed." Her smile was shy—by Kensi's standards, at least—as she clipped his shield to his belt while he slid his ID into his back pocket. G hesitated a moment before accepting her help in securing his holster, useless until his shoulder healed, conscious of Nate's eyes on him.

"Deal still stands, Callen," he said after a second or two. Kensi looked between them, her eyes questioning even as she seemed resigned to not getting an answer.

"You tricked me."

A slight nod accompanied Nate's half-smile. "Maybe. But it's better this way."

"You're just glad to have orders to play around inside my head."

"That too."

Hetty cleared her throat. "We eagerly await your return to work, Agent Callen, which will probably be hastened should you get some much needed rest and recuperation. I believe Agent Hanna is waiting to escort you home."

Sam, who had barely spoken to him in almost a week, but had convinced a half-dozen people to look the other way—saving his job and, probably, his life. His partner, who still couldn't look him in the eye, but had supported him, in his own way, through the confrontation with Shepard.

"Unless you'd rather… curl up in Nate's office?" Kensi's suggestion brought G's attention back to the present and he shook his head.

"Tempting but I think I'll take the ride."

"See you in a couple weeks." Kensi gave him a one-armed hug, careful of his shoulder, and Nate patted him on the back before they went their separate ways. Hetty gave him a smile and a nod before retreating to her office and, just like that, he was alone. And Sam was waiting for him.


	17. Chapter 17

So this is the final chapter. Thank you all for sticking with me, despite my occasional long disappearances. I hope you've all enjoyed this story, and I hope the ending is at least a bit of what you're looking for.

**-17-**

Once he finally worked up the courage to face Sam, which turned out to be more difficult than working up the courage to face Director Shepard, G found his partner leaning against his car outside.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"You know, for a minute in there I thought you were gonna outright confess."

"Thought about it," G admitted as he stopped in front of Sam. His partner studied him silently for a moment or two before opening the door for him. Sam waited until he climbed in before closing the door and going around to the driver's side. "Did you want me to?"

Sam's hand faltered on the gearshift. "The hell?"

G stared through the windshield. He wanted to look his partner in the eyes but he couldn't deal, yet, with what he knew he'd see there. No doubt about it, Sam had bailed him out on this, big time. But all that meant was what G had been afraid of—Sam's loyalty to his team trumped all else, even when it shouldn't. It didn't mean he understood, and it didn't mean their partnership would be the same ever again.

"You haven't said a dozen words to me since Corlis called you. For a second there, in the apartment, I thought you were prepared to shoot me. I thought you expected me to kill him."

"I was." Sam's Adam's apple bobbed. "I did."

Those words carried almost as much force as the shot Corlis had fired. G swallowed, his jaw tight, as Sam put the car into gear and pulled out of the lot. They made the drive to Sam's in silence, and G made it out of the car before Sam could open the door for him—though he had to wait for his partner to let them in the house. He hung in the entry for a second while Sam headed to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water and a beer. G made a half-hearted grab for the beer but Sam kept it out of his reach.

"Meds say no booze."

"How would you know?"

"Because anything they can come up with to give you, I've had it. That, and Nate gave them to me and threatened me with a mandatory psych eval of my own if I didn't make sure you took them."

"I won't tell if you don't." G accepted the water without further complaint. He really was thirsty and, if he was honest with himself, the last thing he needed was alcohol to add to the fuzziness around his brain. He dropped onto the couch, jarring his arm in the process, and bit back a curse.

"You okay?"

"Just tired." It pained him to admit it but he'd never found the sort of drugged-up sleep one got in a hospital bed restful.

"You should get some rest. Doc's orders."

"Nate doesn't count," G replied, letting his eyes close as Sam took the half-full glass from his left hand before he could drop it. "Got a pillow?"

"In the bedroom."

Eyes still closed, G didn't react to Sam's words immediately, mostly because he wasn't sure he'd heard them right. And when he did finally respond, he did so hoping he was deliberately misunderstanding Sam. "I'm not kicking you out of your own bed just 'cause I got myself shot."

"G, when have I ever let you kick me out of my own bed? Even when you tried?"

He forced his eyes open then. "Never?"

"Right."

G watched his partner a long time, checking for any sign he wasn't serious, wasn't sure, was playing some totally un-Sam-like joke, but there was nothing. "You mean that?"

"Don't say things I don't mean."

G was intimately, painfully familiar with that truth, and Sam's words from the car came back to him in a rush.

"_I thought you expected me to kill him."_

"_I did."_

"Why?"

Sam exhaled, hard. "G, all I want to do is sleep. We'll talk as long as you want to talk—though if it lasts more than ten minutes I'm calling Nate and telling him you really do need your head examined—but can we do it sometime when you're not drugged up and I'm running on more than two hours sleep I managed to get at my desk before Hetty whacked me with a rolled-up newspaper?"

G let Sam pull him to his feet and propel him into the bedroom. "What'd you put in that water, anyway?"

"Just water, G. Adrenaline crash; you know the drill."

Adrenaline. Right.

Sam helped him with his shoes and his blankets, and when G felt the mattress dip as Sam stretched out next to him, it only felt natural to gravitate toward the warmth and comfort of another person in bed next to him.

#

G woke to a silent, pitch-black room. There was no irritating, repetitive beep or glow of monitors keeping tabs on his vitals. There was also no one else in the bed with him.

He was almost to the light switch and, just beyond that, the door when he banged his left elbow on Sam's tall dresser and couldn't quite muffle a curse at the pain that lanced up through his shoulder. He heard footsteps heading his way and light from the living room cut a path from the bed to the door when Sam opened it. "You all right?"

"Fine if I could manage not to walk into things." G blinked against the light and stifled a yawn. "What time is it?"

"Midnight. Figured you'd sleep straight through." Sam backed out of the room and G followed, arm cradled protectively against his chest. "Pizza if you want it. Frozen."

"Only the best."

Sam waved him toward the couch before disappearing into the kitchen. G parked himself on one end of the sofa and listened to the whir and ding of the microwave while trying to figure out what movie Sam had paused, until his partner reemerged juggling a plate, a glass of water and his prescription bottle. G shook his head adamantly. "No more drugs."

"You're taking them before we go back to bed if I have to force feed them to you."

"Not yet though." They needed to have this conversation, and he needed to be able think when they had it.

Sam rolled his eyes and shoved the plate and glass toward him. "Eat."

G let him get away with turning the movie—which turned out to be _Red Dawn_—back on until he finished his makeshift dinner, and then stopped the DVD entirely. "I didn't intend to kill Corlis. And I didn't mean for you or Kensi to, either. I wanted to be there and gone before you showed up. I just needed to know if he was involved."

"I know."

G blinked. "What?"

Sam shot him a quizzical look. "I said, I know."

"You said you thought I was going to kill him. You said you were prepared to shoot me." The first stung more than the second, and he pushed that thought out of his mind entirely.

Sam rested his feet, bare except for athletic socks that had seen better days, on his coffee table. "I thought so then, G. When you told us you were being blackmailed, I tried to figure out what it could be—what could be so bad someone could think you'd trade intelligence information to cover it up. I had no clue, G, 'cause it never occurred to me you could murder somebody."

He really, really wished people would stop using that word. He knew it was necessary, given their line of work—all of them had killed people in situations when it was warranted, but this was different and there were only so many ways to make that distinction. But it was still a blow every time he had to hear it said.

"And when Corlis called me and told me that, he left out that the son of a bitch deserved anything he got. He told me you murdered a man and with the way you were acting—you said yourself it was bad; Nate said it was bad—I knew he was telling the truth. I knew there had to be more to it than that but I knew it was true. And it was more than I could handle."

Sam finally shifted on the couch to look at him. "You're a good actor, G. You pull off desperate real well and I hadn't exactly had time to process what happened or why. I get a call from Nate that you tried to kill him. I get a call from DiNozzo that you deliberately went around us to get to Corlis before we could. I didn't know what the hell was going on. And you never put a gun to somebody's head unless you plan to use it."

G cringed, and not just inwardly either. That was true. "First time for everything." He shook his head, but the movement did nothing to clear it. "Did Nate really think I'd tried to kill him?"

Sam shrugged. "I told him if you'd actually tried, he'd be dead. Not really sure if he believed me or not but he seems over it. At least, he was over it enough to tell me off for not having anything to do with you." Sam looked at him sideways. "Did you tell him we…"

"That we slept together and eight hours later you walked out of here looking like you never wanted to speak to me again?" G shook his head. "No. He figured it out on his own. My bag was still in your bedroom and it was pretty obvious no one had slept on the couch." He smiled, feeling a little like a teenage girl. Again. "It probably helped that he'd already figured out I…" He trailed off. That what? He _liked_ Sam? Wanted him? Was in love with him? Any or all of those fit but he couldn't force the words out. This was Sam, his partner. And even though they'd had one night together—which he really, really wanted to repeat—it didn't feel right talking about it like this.

Sam, of course, looked at him curiously. "That you what?"

"You really gonna make me say it?"

Sam smiled. "Yeah, I think I might."

"As tempting as it is to go down this road, the last time we did, it ended kind of badly."

"That wasn't about… us."

"I know what it was about. And I'm not saying I blame you. But can we work on one problem before we complicate it with another?" Not that he considered the change in their relationship a problem… and Sam didn't take his words that way.

Sam leaned back into the corner of the couch. "G… I get why you did it. I don't know if I would've. Can't say I wouldn't but… I don't know what I would've done. Couldn't say without being there. And I'll get over it, but it's gonna take time." Sam raised his eyes. "Can you live with that?"

"Can you?" G countered. Sam's reaction hadn't surprised him in the least. He'd expected his partner to never speak to him again, so at this point he'd take what he could get. Sam just looked at him. "I'm serious, Sam. I…" He gestured between them, still unwilling—or unable, he wasn't sure which—to say the words. "Can you deal with it? If you really want… if that wasn't just about trying to convince me to hang around, can you deal with the fact that I ki—" He paused and, with great effort, corrected himself. "That I murdered someone?"

"Can you?"

"I have. For three years."

"You okay with me knowing?"

"I was afraid of how you'd react," G admitted after a moment or two. "And I'm still not sure how you're reacting. But yeah. I can handle you knowing. Kind of… glad you know. Whatever it means. I didn't mean for you guys to cover it up, Sam. I didn't expect it and I didn't ask for it."

"Like I could let you go to prison. You wouldn't last a day."

Sam's tone, along with his light smirk, betrayed the joke in his words but G still flinched. "I know. Don't think I'm not grateful. But…"

"But you figured it was at least gonna be over, one way or another, and it's the same thing all over again instead."

"Pretty much. I didn't ask for Gibbs and DiNozzo to cover it up, Sam. And if you change your mind—"

"No chance. Besides, like Shepard said, no evidence."

"You practically have a signed confession. Hell, I'd sign one if you wanted me to."

"G, let's not do this."

G slid toward Sam. "I mean it. I don't want… a year from now, I don't want you deciding you made a mistake."

"We talking about the case? Or something else?"

"I don't know." Meeting Sam's eyes wasn't the hardest thing G had ever done—meeting DiNozzo's in that warehouse, standing over Derring's body had been harder. But it was close. "You know me, Sam. Maybe not everything about me, but you know me."

"G, sometimes I don't think I know anything about you. But I don't really think you know much about you either."

G narrowed his eyes. "Could you, maybe, let me finish a thought here?"

"If it ever looked like you were going to, maybe." Sam half-smiled again, but it disappeared quickly. "Go ahead. I'll behave."

"You know me. I… get around. But this isn't that. And if there's any chance that you're going to change your mind, I don't want to…"

"G, those of us who've had relationships know there's always a chance it's not gonna work. Most of the time there's more than a chance. Lot of relationships don't work out. So if that's gonna keep you from ever getting started, then you're gonna have a pretty lonely life."

G gritted his teeth. Trust Sam to miss the point entirely. "I can deal with things just not working out. But if this… with Derring, Corlis, is going to be the reason—"

"It won't. And the other night wasn't about just keeping you here. A lot's happened since then but I haven't changed my mind and I don't plan to. But after everything, I need a little time."

"Time." G nodded. "I can do time."

"Can you do sleep?"

He started to nod again but then stopped. "Um… together?"

His partner "No, G. I'm gonna make you and your bum arm crash on the couch."

"Just checking. Never know with you. All moody and all."

Sam growled something unintelligible under his breath as he hauled G, one-handed, to his feet. "You want to talk moody? I still got a black eye from your mood swings. Which reminds me." He stopped halfway to the bedroom. "I still owe you for that."

G freed his left arm from Sam's vise-grip and gestured toward his sling. "Um, you don't think a bullet wound and a concussion kind of make up for it?"

"I didn't inflict those, now did I?"

"Well, no, but…" Sam disappeared into the bedroom before he could finish his protest. G took that as meaning he was off the hook—at least for now. He hung in the doorway for a couple minutes, watching Sam strip down to his shorts. Time, he could handle. As long as he still had his partner… his team… he could deal with the rest.


End file.
